The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess II The Voyage
by AslansHow24
Summary: True to thier word, Sophia and Peter board the Dawn Treader with Razier when Caspian is 21. They search for the seven missing lords and have a run in with pirates, slavers, dragons and a nightmare that is all to real.
1. Setting Sail

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter One: Setting Sail**

It was finally time. Caspian was turning 21 and he hadn't forgotten the promise given to him by Peter and Sophia. Even though they were only a few years older than him, he looked to them for wisdom and guidance to help him rule Narnia properly. Razier adored his cousin, though he often refered to Caspian as Uncle and considered Peter and Sophia his parents.

"Uncle Caspian, when are we leaving?" Razier asked excitedly, jumping up and down. His best friend, Gael was also extremely excited. Gael was the daughter of Master Rhince and Lady Helena. Rhince was an expert sailor and had been recruited for the voyage. He decided to bring Gael along so that Razier would have someone to play with. Caspian laughed and ruffled Razier's dark hair.

"Drinian and Rhince are putting the finishing touches on the ship" He replied. "We'll be setting sail soon, I promise"

"Will we see Aslan?" Razier asked.

"That I can't answer" Caspian replied. "I haven't seen Aslan in many years"

"Doesn't he care about us?" Gael asked.

"Very much" Caspian replied. "But Aslan shows up in our greatest hour of need, to help us" Razier nodded and grabbed Gael's hand.

"Come on Gael. Doctor Cornelius said we had to finish our lessons before we could go" He said. The two children raced off and Caspian laughed. Peter entered the room and Caspian bowed. Peter sighed.

"Caspian, how many times have we been through this. You needen't bow to me. I am a king no longer" He said.

"Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen" Caspian replied. Peter smirked a bit.

"Drinian said that the ship and crew was ready. We can set sail whenever you are ready" Caspian nodded and laid out a map over the table.

"I want to start at the Lone Islands" He said.

"The Lone Islands, hmm" Peter said thoughtfully. "No one has heard from them in such a long time. Do you think they acknowledge you as thier Lord and Emperor"

"It's hard to say" Caspian said. "We must be cautious when we venture there. Father used to tell me that they were barbarians that lived there" Peter nodded.

"We shall keep a low profile. We mustn't let anyone there know who we are unless it is absolutely necessary" Peter said. Caspian nodded.

The next morning, Caspian and Peter were in the King's study looking over the map.

"Are you guys ready?" a female voice asked from the doorway. "We're burning daylight" They turned to see Sophia dressed in brown slacks, a red tunic and black boots.

"Are you sure you're up for the journey?" Peter asked, walking over to her. "What about..." He placed a hand on her stomach. Sophia batted his hand away playfully.

"Relax. It's another six months before I'm due. I doubt we'll be at sea for that long" She said. "The children are already on the ship. They couldn't wait for you two to be done" Peter chuckled.

"Alright, we're coming, sweetheart" He said. The two kings followed her out of the castle and down to the ship, where the crew was waiting.

"Your cabins are just below, milords and milady" Rhince said. Caspian nodded and they went below deck. Peter and Sophia had a joint cabin with Razier and Gael. Rhince didn't want his daughter to bunk with the crew and Sophia didn't blame him. The rooms were massive and Razier and Gael were in awe.

"It's just like my room in the castle" Gael said excitedly. Peter laughed at thier enthusiasm. Caspian's cabin was a bit smaller, but not by much.

"It looks like its time to set sail, Drinian" Caspian said. "Are you ready"

"Aye, Your Majesty" Drinian said.

As the ship left the dock, Razier set up his chess set. It was a solid gold set that Peter had crafted for him on his seventh birthday. Gael's pieces were silver though, to differentiate.

"Check mate" Razier said, grinning, as he won the third game in a row. Gael sighed.

"There has got to be something else that we can do on this ship" She complained. "I'm tired of chess" Razier thought for a moment.

"Maybe we could practice our swordplay" He suggested.

"Where?" Gael countered.

"Up on deck" Razier said. "C'mon Gael. It will be fun"

"Absolutely not" Sophia said, staring down at the two children.

"But, Mum" Razier complained.

"No buts" Sophia said. "What if one of you fell off the side of the ship, or hurt one of the crewmen with your swords?"

"There's nothing to do around here" Razier complained. Sophia sighed and shot a look at Peter who shrugged.

"It's your call" He said. Before she could say anything further, they heard a shot from the lookout.

"Pirates" Rhince called. "Get Sophia and the children below"

"I am not leaving you" Sophia told Peter, glaring hard at him.

"But," She held up a hand. "Terrence, please escort Prince Razier and Gael to the cabins" Terrence nodded and led the children away. Once they were in the cabin, Razier fumed.

"Mother never lets me have any fun" He said.

"Fun!" Gael shrieked. "Pirates might kill us and you think its fun?" Razier rolled his eyes.

"I was tallking about the swordplay, Gael" He said.

"Oh" Gael was quiet. They heard a clattering and shouting overhead. "What do you think is happening?" Gael asked fearfully.

"I don't know. Let's go find out" Gael was scared, but she wanted to make sure that her father was okay. The two children slipped past Terrence who was standing guard and ran up onto deck. Razier spotted Sophia, who was kneeling beside Peter, pressing something to a wound in his side.

"Mother!" Razier called. He ran towards her, but he was scooped up by a gruff pirate. "Let me go!" He kicked the man in the shins and the pirate dropped him.

"Raz! Raz!" He heard Gael screaming and turned to see her being dragged towards the edge of the ship by a pirate. He ran towards them, but was grabbed by the shoulder.

"Razier! Gael!" Rhince shouted as the children were taken off the ship and onto the pirate ship. The pirates left, leaving the Dawn Treader in a mess and the crew flabbergasted.


	2. King and Queen of Old

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Two: King and Queen of Old**

**Ages (should have done this in the last story)**

**PC**

**Peter: 16**

**Sophia:16**

**Susan: 15**

**Edmund: 13**

**Caspian: 12**

**Lucy: 11**

**VDT**

**Peter: 25**

**Sophia: 25**

**Caspian: 21**

**Edmund: 16**

**Lucy: 14**

**Razier: 8**

**Gael: 8**

Sophia was scared and worried for the children. She wouldn't eat or drink until they were found.

"We'll find them Soph" Peter said. "I promise" Sophia nodded, trying to believe his words. Peter, Caspian and Rhince took a small boat and rowed away from the Dawn Treader.

"They'll be alright you're majesty" Drinian said.

"I love Razier so much, Drinian" Sophia said, wrapping her arms around her middle. "I want him back"

"Hey now" Drinian said, tilting her chin to look at him, "Peter and Caspian know what they are doing. Gael and Razier will be found" Sophia sighed and nodded. She knew that all she could do now was wait for thier return.

Reepicheep climbed on to her shoulder.

"Have faith in Aslan, Milady" He said. "Aslan will make everything alright"

It was nearing nightfall when Peter, Caspian and Rhince caught up with the Pirate Ship which was docked at a port. Peter thanked Aslan that they found it so quickly. The three men crept aboard quietly, hoping to go unnoticed.

Gael was crying and Razier was trying to comfort her.

"Father will rescue us" He was saying. Gael was being forced to work in the kitchen while Razier had become the cabin boy. Though it had only been a day, Razier wasn't sure if he could handle life on this ship. He really wanted his parents.

"Oh shut up!" One of the pirates snapped, downing some ale. "You ain't going home, so you can just stop your whining" Gael glared at the pirate.

"We will" She snapped. "King Caspian will burn down your ship and rescue us" This made the pirate angry.

"Why you insolent little whelp" He raised a hand to slap her but another hand grabbed his wrist.

"Don't you dare strike my daughter" Rhince growled.

"Daddy!" Gael cried happily. Peter and Caspian drew thier swords.

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way" Caspian said. "Let us take the children and no harm will come to you" The pirates laughed. Suddenly, the laughter stopped as the captain stepped out of his cabin.

"I'm afraid I can't let you do that" He said. "Good help is so hard to find"

"My son is not a servant and neither is the girl" Peter said. "I challenge you to single combat. If I win, you release the children. If you win, I will serve you"

"Peter, what are you doing?" Caspian hissed. Peter turned to his cousin.

"Trust me" He said, readying his sword. The captain grinned.

Back on the dawn Treader, Sophia was in her cabin, when she heard a shout.

"There's someone in the water!" Drinian was saying. Sophia ran to the side of he ship and caught a glimpse of auburn hair.

"Lucy!" She shouted. "Someone, bring them on board. Now!" Drinian dove off the ship and Sophia lowered a platform as Drinian helped Lucy, Edmund and a blonde hair boy Sophia didn't recognize, get on to the platform. As it was raised, the King and Queen of Old smiled up at Sophia. When they got on deck, Sophia wrapped them in warm blankets. Suddenly they heard a squeal.

**"**That giant rat thing just tried to claw my face off!" The blonde hair boy shrieked. Reepicheep appeared offended.

"I was merely trying to expel the water from your lungs, sir" He replied indignantly. The boy's eyes grew wide.

"It talked! Did you see? Did anyone just hear that? It talked!" He shrieked.

"He always talks" Drinian replied. Sophia hid a smile.

"Actually, it's getting him to shut up that's the trick" She said. Reepicheep looked at her, an amused look on his face.

"When there is nothing to be said you're highness, I will not say it" he replied.

"I demand to know where in the blazes am I?" The boy shouted.

"Your on the Dawn Treader, the finest ship in Narnia's navy" Acerek, the minotaur replied. The boy looked at him and promptly fainted. Sophia sighed.

"Take care of him, will you Acerek" She said. The minotaur sighed and lifted the boy up. Sophia turned to Lucy and Edmund.

"I am so happy to see you" She said.

"Did you call for us?" Lucy asked.

"No" Sophia said. "Aslan is most likely behind this. Come, we have much to talk about" It was a shock to see how grown-up Lucy had become. She was fourteen now as it had been three years for her and Edmund. Edmund was becoming a handsome young man at 16.

Once they were in dry clothes, Lucy in one of Sophia's dresses and Edmund in an outfit of Peter's, Sophia led them into the study. She opened a glass cabinet and pulled out Lucy's belt with her healing cordial and dagger and handed it to her. Then she turned to Edmund.

"It was always Peter's hope that you would return in our lifetime" She said. "He had this crafted for you" She pulled out a sword, similiar to Peter's sword with jewels on the dagger. Edmund was in awe.

"Where is Peter?" Edmund asked, though he was sure seeing Peter would be startling, since he was older now. Sophia sighed.

"Peter, Caspian and I started on this journey to find seven lords who were loyal to Caspian the Ninth" Sophia explained, "but we were attacked by pirates who kidnapped Razier and one of the sailor's daughters Gael. Peter, Caspian and Gael's father have gone after them" Lucy gasped.

"I hope they're okay" She said.

"Lucy, I hope you won't mind sharing a room with Razier and Gael. It would not be proper to have you sleeping in the sailor's quarters" Lucy nodded.

"Edmund, you can share Caspian's cabin if you wish or we do have some space in the Sailor's quarters" Edmund thought for a moment.

"I think Eustace and I can handle the Sailor's quarters" He replied, smirking. Lucy nudged him. Sophia smiled.

"I cannot express how happy I am to see you" She said quietly. "This voyage is a dangerous one, perhaps that is why you have come"


	3. The return

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Three: The return**

Eustace was not at all happy about being stuck with the sailors on the ship and complained bitterly about the fact that Lucy got a good cabin while he was sea sick and deserved better than sleeping in unhygenic quarters.

"He's quite the complainer, isn't he?" Sophia asked, stifling a grin.

"He's just warming up" Edmund snapped, shooting a glare at his mouthy cousin.

"I'll have you know that just as soon as we find land, I'm having you all arrested for kidnapping" Eustace spouted off. Sophia folded her arms over her chest.

"Kidnapping is it?" She asked. "As I recall it, we saved your life"

"You're holding me against my will" Eustace retorted.

"Feel free to leave any time" Sophia said, gesturing to the water. "Though, I doubt you'll get very far" She glanced out over the ocean, hoping to spot her husband or the others, but there was nothing.

"There's something over there!" The man in the lookout said, pointing at the other side of the ship. Sophia, Lucy and Edmund rushed to the other side and saw a small boat in the distance.

"Please Aslan. Let it be them" Sophia whispered. As the boat got closer, Edmund looked through the telescope and didn't like what he saw. Rhince was carrying a wounded Peter, who had blood running down his face. A little girl was crying and a boy was comforting her. Caspian looked cross and upset. When they got the the ship, Edmund and Drinian helped them up. Sophia felt her husband's forhead.

"What happened?" She asked. Caspian sighed and raked a hand through his hair.

"Peter insisted on dueling the captain, who was a lot more skilled than we expected. Peter managed to beat him, but he took a pretty bad beating himself" Lucy quickly uncorked her healing cordial and poured it into Peter's mouth. The blood vanished and his ashen face appeared rosy again. Peter opened his eyes and sat up.

"Is everyone safe?" He asked.

"We're more than safe" Lucy said, smirking. Peter's eyes widened and he enveloped her in a bone crushing hug.

"Lucy!" He exclaimed. "You're so young" Lucy rolled her eyes.

"And you're so old" She said dryly.

"Hey, don't I get a hug?" Edmund asked.

"Edmund!" Peter hugged his brother.

"What are you guys doing here?" He asked.

"Well, you know. the usual" Edmund replied cheekily. "We also brought a visitor" He said, slight malice in his voice.

"Who?" Peter asked looking around.

"What is going on over here?" Eustace snapped, storming over to the group. He stared hard at Peter, who tried not to choke. "Who are you?"

"Eustace" Peter asked in disbelief. "You brought Eustace?"

"Hey!" Edmund said frowning. "It's not like we had a choice"

"How do you know my name?" Eustace asked confused. Edmund and Lucy rolled thier eyes.

"It's Peter" Lucy said. "Our brother" She said it as if Eustace were a small child. Eustace's eyes bulged.

"What are you doing here?" He asked. "You're supposed to be dead" Peter and Sophia exchanged looks.

"I am dead" He replied. "I am dead in England. Since I can no longer return to your world, I live here" Eustace raised an eyebrow.

"Whatever. Where can I find the british consel?" Now it was Peter's turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Haven't you been listening?" He asked. "We aren't in England. There isn't a british consel" He sighed.

"Dad, can Gael and I go to our cabin?" Razier asked. "She's still pretty shaken about what happened" Peter nodded.

"Yes, go ahead" He said. The kids ran off.

"Land ho!" the man in the look out said. Peter and Caspian rushed to the side of the boat to look through the telescope.

"We must be at the lone islands" He said. He turned to face his family.

"Sophia, I want you and the kids to stay here. I very much doubt that they recognize Caspian's leadership. It's been years since any one has heard from them. It could be dangerous" Sophia nodded.

"Lucy, Eustace, you must not let anyone know who we are. Remember that" Lucy nodded and Eustace rolled his eyes. Once the ship was anchored, Reepicheep, Caspian, Lucy, Eustace, Edmund and Peter went ashore. The rest of the crew waited aboard the Dawn Treader, to see what news thier king would bring them of the lone islands.


	4. Slave Traders

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Four: Slave Traders**

The group walked down a path when they spotted several men who were sitting under a tree and drinking ale.

"Just keep calm" Peter told the group. They tried to walk past the men, but one of them stood up.

"Hullo" He said cheerfully.

"Is there a governor around here?" Peter asked.

"Aye. Governor Gumpus" the man replied. "But you'll stay and drink with us"

"No thank you" Peter said. "We're in a hurry"

"Oh come on. drink" The man, whose name was Pug, handed Peter a canteen. The young king of old took it cautiously, when suddenly the men surrounded them and tied thier wrists with rope. Peter and Caspian struggled to get away, but to no avail. The group of men led them down the path.

"Pug!" They turned to see a man staring at them. He was eying Caspian carefully. "More of your usual wares?" He asked, disgusted.

"Now, don't get all upitu" Pug said. "We have our rights to" The man pointed at Caspian.

"How much for that one?" He asked.

"fifty shillings" Pug replied.

"Make it thirty" The man replied. Pug agreed and the exchange was made. The man led Caspian away and Lucy burst into tears.

"Now now" Pug said. "You don't want to mess up your pretty face" Peter glared at the man.

Once Caspian was in the home of the man who had purchased him, The man turned to look at him.

"You look like your father, Sire" He said, bowing low. Caspian was shocked.

"You know who I am?" He asked. The man nodded.

"I am Lord Bern" The man replied. Caspian grinned broadly.

"My cousins and I are on a quest to find the seven lords who were loyal to my father" Caspian said. He looked out over the balcony.

"Is it possible to save my friends?" He asked.

"Of course, sire" Bern said. "But we must be cautious. I doubt Gumpus will acknowledge your existence" Caspian nodded.

"We must return to my ship" He replied. "It is of a great importance that we rescue my friends" Bern nodded.

"Very well Sire" He said.

When Bern and Caspian got to the ship, Sophia was livid when she discovered what had happened.

"I'm going with you" She said, leaving no room for argument. Caspian nodded and Sophia dressed in her best and placed her tiara on her head. She looked very much like a queen and she hoped to get everyone back in one piece.

Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace and Reep were locked in a cell over night. Pug had told them that they would be sold at the market, the following day. Lucy continued to cry, while Edmund comforted her.

"This is all yout fault" Eustace accused Peter. Peter rolled his eyes.

"Would you just shut up" He snapped.

Governor Gumpus was eating breakfast when King Caspian, Princess Sophia and the Crew marched in demanding an audience.

"No appointments except between 5 and 6 on the second saturday of every month" Gumpus declared. Angered by his attitude, Lord Bern and Master Rhince tipped the table over and forced the governor to his knees. Caspian sat down in a chair.

"I am unhappy with they way you have been running the Lone Islands" Caspian declared. "As such, you are relieved from your duties" He turned to Lord Bern. "Lord Bern, do you promise to govern the Lone Islands in the ways of Narnia?"

"I do" Bern announced. Once that was done and Gumpus was officially dethroned, they group made thier way to the market, where Lucy had just been sold to a very fat ugly man. Pug was in the process of trying to sell Eustace, but no body wanted him.

"Announcing His royal Majesty, King Caspian and her royal highness Princess Sophia" A herald said. Caspian and Sophia made thier way through the crowd.

"Pug, here me!" Caspian said. "Release my friends or you will be charged with treason to the crown" Pug let go of Eustace's arm and nodded to Tack, who opened the grate, letting Peter, Reepicheep and Edmund out. Caspian looked around for Lucy who quickly ran over to him. "I declare every slave in this market free" Caspian announced. A great cheer rose out of the crowd. Pug seemed utterly deflated. Sophia walked up to him and punched him in the face, sending him flying.

"That's for kidnapping my husband" She snapped. "Father of my child" She placed a hand on her belly. Lucy's eyes widened and she squealed, hugging Sophia. When they got back to the ship, Caspian smiled.

"The first of the seven lords has been found" He said. "Let us hope that we have the same luck in finding the others"


	5. The storm

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Five: The storm**

The next few days were delightful.

Lucy loved being on the ship. She also enjoyed the company of Sophia and Gael. The three of them would often sit on the deck and talk while the men worked. The food was good too. Edmund and Peter had a lot of catching up to do, and Edmund often played chess with Razier when Peter was busy discussing the voyage with Caspian.

Unfortunately, this pleasant time for everyone (except Eustace) did not last. There came an evening when Lucy, gazing idly astern at the long furrow they were leaving behind them, saw a great rack of clouds building itself up in the west with amazing speed.

"A storm's brewing" She shouted. It was true.

All the waves behind them seemed to take on unusual shapes and the sea became a yellowish colour like dirty canvas. The air grew colder. The ship seemed to move uneasily as if she felt danger behind her. The sail would be flat and limp one minute and wildly the next.

"All hands on Deck" Drinian shouted.

Rain splattered Lucy's face as Sophia grabbed her shoulder.

"we must go" She said. "We have to get below" Lucy whipped the wet bangs out of her hair.

"I have to help them" She shouted over the wind.

"There is nothing we can do" Sophia cried. "Come on, hurry"

Whenthe storm was over Eustace made the following entries in his diary.

_3 September. The first day for ages when I have been able to write. We had been driven before a hurricane for thirteen days and nights. I know that because I kept a careful count, though the others all say it was only twelve. Pleasant to be embarked on a dangerous voyage with people who cant even count right! I have had a ghastly time, up and down enormous waves hour after hour, usually wet to the skin, and not even an attempt at giving us proper meals. Needless to say theres no wireless or even a rocket, so no chance of signalling anyone for help. It all proves what I keep on telling them, the madness of setting out in a rotten little tub like this. It would be bad enough even if one was with decent people instead of fiends in human form. Caspian and Edmund are simply brutal to me. The __night we lost our mast (theres only a stump left now), though I was not at all well, they forced me to come on deck and work like a slave. Lucy shoved her oar in by saying that Reepicheep was longing to go only he was too small. I wonder she doesnt see that everything that little beast does is all for the sake of showing off. Even at her age she ought to have that amount of sense. I'm so thirsty and all I get is one cup of water a day.__ Lucy for some reason tried to make up to me by offering me some of hers but that interfering prig Edmund wouldnt let her. _

_5 September. Still becalmed and very hot. Feeling rotten all day and am sure Ive got a temperature. Of course they havent the sense to keep a thermometer on board._

_6 September. A horrible day. Woke up in the night knowing I was feverish and must have a drink of water. Any doctor would have said so. Heaven knows I'm the last person to try to get any unfair advantage but I never dreamed that this water-rationing would be meant to apply to a sick man. In fact I would have woken the others up and asked for some only I thought it would be selfish to __wake them. So I got up and took my cup and tiptoed out of the Black Hole we slept in, taking great care not to disturb Caspian and Edmund, for they've been sleeping badly since the heat and the short water began. I always try to consider others whether they are nice to me or not. I got out all right into the big room, if you can call it a room, where the rowing benches and the luggage are. The thing of water is at this end. All was going beautifully, but before I'd drawn a cupful who should catch me but that little spy Reep. I tried to explain that I was going on deck for a breath of air (the business about the water had nothing to do with him) and he asked me why I had a cup. He made such a noise that the whole ship was roused. They treated me scandalously. I asked, as I think anyone would have, why Reepicheep was sneaking about the water cask in the middle of the night. He said that as he was too small to be any use on deck, he did sentry over the water every night so that one more man could go to sleep. Now comes their rotten unfairness: they all believed him. Can you beat it? I had to apologize or the dangerous little brute would have been at me with his sword. And then Caspian showed up in his true colours as a brutal tyrant and said out loud for everyone to hear that anyone found stealing water in future would get two dozen. I didnt know what this meant till Edmund explained to me. It comes in the sort of books those Pevensie kids read. __After this cowardly threat Caspian changed his tune and started being patronizing. Said he was sorry for me and that everyone felt just as feverish as I did and we must all make the best of it, etc. , etc. Odious stuck-up prig. Stayed in bed all day today._

_7 September. A little wind today but still from the west._ _Made a few miles eastward with part of the sail, set on what Drinian calls the jury-mast-that means the bowsprit set upright and tied (they call it lashed) to the stump of the real mast. Still terribly thirsty_.

8_ September. Still sailing east. I stay in my bunk all day now and see no one except Lucy till the two fiends come to bed. Lucy gives me a little of her water ration. She says girls don't __get as thirsty as boys. I had often thought this but it ought to be more generally known at sea._

_9 September. Land in sight; a very high mountain a long way off to the south-east._

_10 September. The mountain is bigger and clearer but still a long way off. Gulls again today for the first time since I dont know how long._

_11 September. Caught some fish and had them for dinner. Dropped anchor at about 7 p. M. In three fathoms of water in a bay of this mountainous island. That idiot Caspian wouldnt let us go ashore because it was getting dark and he was afraid of savages and wild beasts. Extra water ration tonight._

What awaited them on this island was going to concern Eustace more than anyone else, but he could not no this. He also misplaced his diary, which is good, considering that all he did was complain anyway.

When morning came, they found that they were in a bay encircled by such cliffs and crags that it was like a Norwegian fjord. In front of them, at the head of the bay, there was some level land heavily overgrown with trees that appeared to be cedars, through which a rapid stream came out. Beyond that was a steep ascent ending in a jagged ridge and behind that a vague darkness of mountains which ran into dull-coloured clouds so that you could not see their tops. The nearer cliffs, at each side of the bay, were streaked here and there with lines of white which everyone knew to be waterfalls, though at that distance they did not show any movement or make any noise. Indeed the whole place was very silent and the water of the bay as smooth as glass. It reflected every detail of the cliffs. The scene would have been pretty in a picture but was rather oppressive in real life. It was not a country that welcomed visitors.


	6. Eustace's Escape

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Six: Eustace's Escape**

The entire crew went ashore on the Island, for Sophia wanted no more disasters, like the one they encountered in Narrowhaven on the Lone Islands.

After a good meal, Caspian chose four men to return to the ship, to keep it from being invaded. There was a lot of work to do before they could continue thier journey. After all, the ship was no longer looking as it did when it pulled out of Narnia. Caspian noted this with a friend.

"How are we going to fix her?" He asked Peter in a low voice. Peter sighed heavily.

"I don't know" He admitted. "She's still sailable though"

"But for how long?" Sophia asked.

As Eustace lay under a tree, he crossed his arms. There was no way he was helping with any work. Hadn't these people heard of rest, for heaven's sake. He eyed the crew, but no one was paying any attention to him. He grinned. Now was his moment to escape. He stood and brushed off his slacks.

"I'm not staying here" He muttered, to no one really, just to himself. As he began walking, he kept glancing over his shoulder, worried that someone would see him, but no one did, or if they did, they paid no attention to the sulky boy.

As he walked, the ground began sloping steeply up in front of him. The grass was dry and slippery but manageable if he used his hands as well as his feet, and though he panted and mopped his forehead a good deal, he plugged away steadily. This showed, by the way, that his new life, though he wouldn't admit it, had already done him some good; the old Eustace, Harold and Alberta's Eustace, would have given up the climb after about ten minutes.

Slowly, and with several rests, he reached the ridge. Here he had expected to have a view into the heart of the island, but the clouds had now come lower and nearer and a sea of fog was rolling to meet him. He sat down and looked back. He was now so high that the bay looked small beneath him and miles of sea were visible. Then the fog from the mountains closed in all round him, thick but not cold, and he lay down and turned this way and that to find the most comfortable position and fell asleep.

After his nap, when he awoke, he did not enjoy himself as he had planned. He began to feel lonely, being up there all alone. He tried to ignore the feeling, but it wouldn't go away.

"I wonder how long I've been gone" He muttered to himself. "I wonder how long I've been asleep for" He stood and once again brushed off his slacks. Suddenly, a horrible thought occured to him. Perhaps the others had left, not caring about him at all. He quickly began to descend the mountain.

At first he tried to do it too quickly, slipped on the steep grass, and slid for several feet. Then he thought this had carried him too far to the left - and as he came up he had seen precipices on that side. So he clambered up again, as near as he could guess to the place he had started from, and began the descent afresh, bearing to his right. After that things seemed to be going better. He went very cautiously, for he could not see more than a yard ahead, and there was still perfect silence all around him. Every moment the terrible idea of being left behind grew stronger. If he had understood Caspian and the Pevensies at all he would have known, of course, that there was not the least chance of their doing any such thing. But he had persuaded himself that they were all fiends in human form.

"At last!" Eustace said, as he came slithering down a slide of loose stones and found himself on the level. "And now, where are those trees?" He said looking around, remembering that he had come through a wood. He blinked. "Why, I do believe the fog is clearing" And it was. The light increased every moment and made him blink again. The fog lifted. He was suddenly in an utterly unknown valley and the sea was nowhere in sight.

"Oh No" Eustace whispered to himself. "Now how am I going to get back" What Eustace didn't know was that his adventure had only just begun.

AT that very moment the others were washingup in the river and generally getting ready for dinner and a rest. The three best archers had gone up into the hills north of the bay and returned laden with a pair of wild goats which were now roasting over a fire. Caspian had ordered a cask of wine ashore, strong wine of Archenland which had to be mixed with water before you drank it, so there would be plenty for all. The work had gone well so far and it was a merry meal.

It was while she was eating that Razier posed the question.

"Where's Eustace?" Lucy and Edmund looked up. Edmund narrowed his eyes.

"He probably left to avoid all the hard work" He said, frowning.


	7. A Dragon

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Seven: A Dragon**

Edmund and Caspian were searching for Eustace, when they found the cave of treasure. Unfortunately, they also found Eustace's clothes which were ripped to shreds. Caspian picked up the clothing mournfully. He may not have liked the little bugger, but he was of Edmund's blood.

"What do you think got him?" Edmund asked. he knew that Lucy would be unhappy when she heard what they had found. She and Sophia were currently on the ship, awaiting any news.

Lucy was just tying down a mast when Gael screamed at her to watch out. Lucy ducked just in time as a large, golden dragon swooped over the ship. Reepicheep ran up the rails as the dragon perched at the tip of the ship and stabbed the dragon in the foot. The dragon roared with pain and swooped back to the Island.

Edmund and Caspian were heading back towards the row boat and ship when Caspian heard a swooshing sound behind him. He dropped to the ground, but Edmund wasn't so lucky, as he was swept into the air but the dragon. Lucy saw this and gasped.

"Edmund" She screamed.

"Lucy" Edmund called back. The dragon in question did not release his grip on Edmund, instead flying him over an open plain. Edmund looked down and could not believe what he saw. Written in large lettering, obviously by fire, were the words, I AM EUSTACE.

"No way" Edmund whispered as the dragon returned him to shore and dropped him on the beach in front of Caspian, who readied his sword. "Stop" Edmund said, standing between Caspian and Eustace. He looked at Caspian square in the eyes. "It's Eustace" He said calmly.

"What's Eustace?" Caspian asked, lowering his sword a fraction.

"The dragon" Edmund said. Caspian stared at the dragon in disbelief and dropped his sword.

"Eustace?" He whispered, eying the dragon suspiciously. The dragon nodded.

Once everyone was back on land, Lucy reached up to touch Eustace's scaly face.

"There's something coming from his eyes" Sophia said. Lucy looked up and felt pity for Eustace was crying. Lucy noticed that her cousin seemed to be in pain.

"Show me your poor paw", She said gently, "I might be able to cure it"

The dragon-that-had-been-Eustace held out its sore leg gladly enough, remembering how Lucys cordial had cured him of sea-sickness before he became a dragon. But he was disappointed. The magic fluid reduced the swelling and eased the pain a little but it could not dissolve the gold band which was tight around him.

Everyone had now crowded round to watch the treatment.

"Look!" Caspian said, staring at the bracelet.

"LOOK at what?" Edmund asked.

"Look at the device on the gold" Caspian pointed out. They looked closer to see a little hammer with a diamond above it like a star.

"Why, I've seen that before" Drinian said.

"Seen it!" Sophia exclaimed. "Why, of course you have. It is the sign of a great Narnian house. This is the Lord Octesians arm-ring" Eustace looked down at the ring of gold on his forearm and shuddered. Had the dragon he had seen been a narnian lord? Was that his fate? To stay here forever? At the thought of this notion, he began to cry even more. Lucy wrapped her arms around his neck.

Lucy was trying very hard to console him and even kissed the scaly face.

"How did it happen?" Caspian asked. Eustace gave him the 'Look' which meant, How am I supposed to tell you that when I can't talk. Caspian then had the decency to look sheepish. "Well, we will all stand by you"

"Is there anyway of changing him back?" Lucy asked. Caspian sighed.

"I do not know" He said. "We'll have to pray Aslan comes up with something" Lucy and Edmund nodded. They may not have liked Eustace very much, but would not wish this fate on any one. It was as they were all standing around, wondering what to do, Caspian realized how useful it would be to have Eustace as a dragon, at least for right now.

It became clear to everyone that Eustace's character had been rather improved by becoming a dragon. He was anxious to help. He flew over the whole island and found it was all mountainous and inhabited only by wild goats and droves of wild swine. Of these he brought back many carcasses as provisions for the ship. He was a very humane killer too, for he could dispatch a beast with one blow of his tail so that it didnt know it had been killed. He ate a few himself, of course, but always alone, for now that he was a dragon he liked his food raw but he could never bear to let others see him at his messy meals.

And one day, flying slowly and wearily but in great triumph, he bore back to camp a great tall pine tree which he had torn up by the roots in a distant valley and which could be made into a capital mast. And in the evening if it turned chilly, he was a comfort to everyone, for the whole party would come and sit with their backs against his hot sides and get well warmed and dried; and one puff of his fiery breath would light the most obstinate fire. Sometimes he would take a select party for a fly on his back, so that they could see wheeling below them the green slopes, the rocky heights, the narrow pit-like valleys and far out over the sea to the eastward a spot of darker blue on the blue horizon which might be land. Yes indeed, Eustace's character had changed, but no one was quite sure what to do because they couldn't leave him alone on the island and they weren't sure they could take him with them as a dragon.


	8. Transformation

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Eight: Transformation**

It had been a week since landing on the Island and the crew was beginning to talk about leaving the Island. Caspian, Sophia, Lucy, Peter and Edmund knew that they could not leave Eustace behind.

"What are we going to do?" Lucy asked, when she and Sophia were alone. Sophia sighed.

"I don't know" She replied honestly. "I wish Aslan was here" Lucy nodded.

"So do I" She said. She turned to her sister-in-law. "It's so hard to return to my own world, especially when Edmund and I are the only ones who know where Peter really is" Sophia glanced at the younger girl in surprise.

"Surely Susan knows this as well" She chided the girl. Lucy shook her head.

"Seeing Peter's body like that caused her to snap" Lucy said quietly. "I think she wants to believe that he's dead to avoid the pain that Aslan didn't send him back"

"Surely she still believes in Narnia" Sophia said. Lucy shrugged.

"I don't know anymore. She sits in her room, staring at the wall and she visits Peter's grave every week" She replied. "Whenever Ed or I mention Narnia, she brushes it off as a game" Sophia couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"How could she do that?" She asked. "How could she just forget about us like that?"

"Because she believes Aslan stole Peter" Edmund's voice came from behind them. "Those were the last words she said before she began to convince herself that Narnia was just some made up game while we were bored at Professor Kirke's house" He sat down beside them.

"Have we decided what to do about Eustace?" Sophia and Lucy shook thier heads.

"We can't just leave him here" Lucy said. "What will Aunt Alberta say?" Ed shook his head.

"I don't know, Lu. I thought perhaps he could fly, but there could be stretches of water before we find land again" He said. Sophia nodded.

"Yes, and he could get too tired to fly all that way and he can't land on the ship" She said.

Eustace was of course a dragon and as such, his hearing was much better than it was when he was a boy. He flew to the cavern where he had become a dragon and sat there and wept. His cousins wouldn't leave him, of course, but how could he go with them. Were they all doomed to the island forever. As he wept, he began to scrape the scales off his flesh in hopes that he could tear the dragon skin off of his body. Suddenly, standing before him was the most majestic beast and he recognized him at once as Aslan, the lion that his cousins were so fond of. Aslan padded closer to Eustace and shook his furry head.

"You alone cannot get rid of those scales" He told the dragon. "I must help you" Eustace shuddered a little as Aslan came closer. He had never seen a lion up close and even though he knew that Aslan was a friend, he was still frightened by the intensity of Aslan's stare.

"You have learned from your greed and selfish ways" Aslan said. Eustace nodded, though it was not a question. Aslan breathed on Eustace causing the dragon to stumble backwards. Eustace fell into the creek and was completely submerged. While he was under, he heard Aslan's voice.

"You have become a dragon because of your greed. Now I will cleanse you and make you new again" As Eustace rose from the water, his scales fell off and his body shrank. As he stepped out of the water, he realized that he was once more human. He wanted to thank Aslan, but the lion was gone. Thankfully, due to his endeavors as a dragon, Eustace knew the way back to camp.

Lucy was sitting in the grass humming when she saw him come running towards her. Tears filled her eyes and she stood up as he crashed into her, giving her a bone crushing hug, which, if you knew Eustace from before, you would think he had lost his marbles. Lucy wrapped her arms around her cousin, returning the hug.

"Eustace, you're back. What happened?" She asked. Eustace's face lit up and Lucy knew at once what had happened. "You've seen Aslan, haven't you?" She asked.

Later, as they decided to spend one last night at the camp, Eustace told them about his encounter with the lion.

**"**So, what was it like... when Aslan changed you back?" Edmund asked.

"No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't do it myself" Eustace replied. "Then he came towards me. I was submerged in water and when I cam out, I was a boy again. I just want to apologize for how rotten I've been" Peter smiled and ruffled the boy's head.

"Ed had his own personal experience of that sort the first time we came to Narnia" He said. "It changes you" Eustace smiled. He did not ask about Ed's experience as he sensed that it was not something his cousin wished to talk about.

"We'd better all get some sleep" Sophia said. "We'll be heading out at first light"


	9. Deathwater Island

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Nine: Deathwater Island**

The entire crew was cheerful as the Dawn Treader sailed away from Dragon Island. They had fair winds as soon as they were out of the bay and came early next morning to the unknown land which some of them had seen when flying over the mountains while Eustace was still a dragon. It was a low green island inhabited by nothing but rabbits and a few goats, but from the ruins of stone huts, and from blackened places where fires had been, they judged that it had been inhabited not long before. There were also some bones and broken weapons.

"Pirates' work," Caspian suggested.

"Or the dragon's," Edmund replied, shrugging. There was nothing much on the Island besides a small boat just the right size for Reepicheep, so it was brought on board, and then they continued on thier way.

For about five days they ran before a south-south-east wind, out of sight of all lands and saw nothing but water and sky. Then they had a day when it rained hard till the afternoon.

Eustace attempted to place Chess with Reepicheep, but the mouse kept winning. Gael, who was reading, glanced out the window.

"I think there's something out there. Something big" She said nervously. Sophia, Gael and Razier were ordered to stay below deck, while the rest of them rushed up on the deck of the ship. As they looked out, Drinian looked worried.

"Its moving a great deal quicker than we can sail, Sire," said Drinian. "It'll be up with us in a minute."

"What is it?" Peter asked. What it turned out to be was far worse than anyone had suspected. Suddenly, only about the length of a cricket pitch from their port side, an appalling head reared itself out of the sea. It was all greens and vermilions with purple blotches - except where shell fish clung to it - and shaped rather like a horse's, though without ears. It had enormous eyes, eyes made for staring through the dark depths of the ocean, and a gaping mouth filled with double rows of sharp fish-like teeth. It came up on what they first took to be a huge neck, but as more and more of it emerged everyone knew that this was not its neck but its body and that at last they were seeing what so many people have foolishly wanted to see - the great Sea Serpent. The folds of its gigantic tail could be seen far away, rising at intervals from the surface. And now its head was towering up higher than the mast.

Every man rushed to his weapon, but there was nothing to be done, the monster was out of reach.

"Shoot! Shoot!" The Master Bowman shouted, and several obeyed, but the arrows glanced off the Sea Serpent's hide as if it was ironplated. Then, for a dreadful minute, everyone was still, staring up at its eyes and mouth and wondering where it would pounce.

But it didn't pounce. It shot its head forward across the ship on a level with the yard of the mast. Now its head was just beside the fighting top. Still it stretched and stretched till its head was over the starboard bulwark. Then down it began to come - not on to the crowded deck but into the water, so that the whole ship was under an arch of serpent. And almost at once that arch began to get smaller: indeed on the starboard the Sea Serpent was now almost touching the Dawn Treader's side.

Eustace now did the first brave thing he had ever done. He was wearing a sword that Caspian had lent him. As soon as the serpent's body was near enough on the starboard side he jumped on to the bulwark and began hacking at it with all his might. Angered, The serpent reared its tail and sent Eustace flying into the water.

"Eustace!"Lucy and Edmund screamed is name.

"Don't fight! Push!" Reepicheep called out. It was so unusual for the Mouse to advise anyone not to fight that, even in that terrible moment, every eye turned to him. And when he jumped up on to the bulwark, forward of the snake, and set his little furry back against its huge scaly, slimy back, and began pushing as hard as he could, quite a number of people saw what he meant and rushed to both sides of the ship to do the same. And when, a moment later, the Sea Serpent's head appeared again, this time on the port side, and this time with its back to them, then everyone understood.

The brute had made a loop of itself round the Dawn Treader and was beginning to draw the loop tight. When it got quite tight - snap! - there would be floating matchwood where the ship had been and it could pick them out of the water one by one. Their only chance was to push the loop backward till it slid over the stern; or else (to put the same thing another way) to push the ship forward out of the loop.

Lucy paid no heed to what the crew was doing, she was eying the raging water frantically.

"Peter, I need some rope" She called over the raging wind and rain. Peter eyed his sister and in that moment, he knew what she intended to do. He also knew that in Narnia, she was a warrior and would not take no for an answer. He hesitated onl momentarily, before grabbing a coil of rope and tossing it to her.

"Be careful!" He shouted. No one else noticed this exhange, they were too busy trying to push the serpent, as Reepicheep had instructed. The whole ship's company was in two long lines along the two bulwarks, each man's chest to the back of the man in front, so that the weight of the whole line was in the last man, pushing for their lives. For a few sickening seconds (which seemed like hours) nothing appeared to happen.

Lucy paid them no heed, tying one end the rope tightly to the mast and the other around her chest. She dove off the ship. Edmund saw her.

"Lucy!" He shouted, making to go after her. Peter stopped him.

"She knows what she's doing" He told his brother. Edmund nodded.

Meanwhile, Joints cracked, sweat dropped, breath came in grunts and gasps from the men pushing the serpent. Then they felt that the ship was moving. They saw that the snake-loop was further from the mast than it had been. But they also saw that it was smaller. And now the real danger was at hand. Could they get it over the poop deck, or was it already too tight? Yes. It would just fit. It was resting on the rails. The Sea Serpent's body was so low now that they could make a line across the poop and push side by side. Hope rose high till everyone remembered the high carved stern, the dragon tail, of the Dawn Treader. It would be quite impossible to get the brute over that.

"An axe," cried Caspian hoarsely, "and still shove." Edmund, who knew where everything was, heard him where he was standing. In a few seconds he had been below, got the axe, and was rushing up the ladder to the deck. But just as he reached the top there came a great crashing noise like a tree coming down and the ship rocked and darted forward. For at that very moment, whether because the Sea Serpent was being pushed so hard, or because it foolishly decided to draw the noose tight, the whole of the carved stern broke off and the ship was free.

The serpent made no attempt to continue to chase them as it slithered away, disapearing in the depths. Peter and Edmund rushed to the side of the deck where Lucy had tied the rope.

After Lucy had jumped off the ship and dove into the water, she began searching for the blonde. She swam further down and realized that the rope wasn't long enough. Should she go back and get a longer rope, she wondered. No. She took the dagger from her sheath and sliced the rope. As she swam further down, she spotted her cousin, who was unconcious. He didn't know how to swim and had sank like a rock. She grabbed him under the arm and kicked with her feet towards the surface, but he was too heavy. She now berated herself for cutting the rope, for there was no one to pull her up and she couldn't hold her breath forever.

Edmund stared at the cut rope.

"She wouldn't" He whispered. Peter sighed.

"She would" He said.

"There!" Razier shouted, pointing out at the water. They all turned to look and spotted two mermaids. One was holding onto Lucy and the other had Eustace. Caspian quickly lowered the rowboat and the mermaids placed the humans in the boat. As the boat was lifted, the mermaids waved at the vrew, then dove beneath the waves.

Eustace and Lucy were dragged onto shore. Peter performed CPR on Lucy and Edmund performed it on Eustace to get the water out of thier lungs. Lucy began coughing and slowly opened her eyes.

"I thought I told you to be careful" Peter said, hugging his little sister.

"Can't breath" She gasped out. Eustace slowly opened the eyes.

"What happened?" He asked groggily. Edmund looked at him, teary-eyed.

"You were recklessly brave" He said, hugging his cousin.

After this they sailed for three days more and saw once again nothing but sea and sky. On the fourth day the wind changed to the north and the seas began to rise; by the afternoon it had nearly become a gale. But at the same time they sighted land on their port bow.

"By your leave, Sire," said Drinian, "we will try to get under the lee of that country by rowing and lie in harbour, maybe till this is over." Caspian agreed, but a long row against the gale did not bring them to the land before evening. By the last light of that day they steered into a natural harbour and anchored, but no one went ashore that night. In the morning they found themselves in the green bay of a rugged, lonely-looking country which sloped up to a rocky summit. From the windy north beyond that summit clouds came streaming rapidly. They lowered the boat and loaded her with any of the water casks which were now empty.

"Which stream shall we water at, Drinian?" Caspian asked as he took his seat in the stern-sheets of the boat. "There seem to be two coming down into the bay."

"It makes little odds, Sire," Drinian replied. "But I think it's a shorter pull to that on the starboard-the eastern one."

"Here comes the rain," Lucy pointed out. And it was.

"Let's go to the other stream. There are trees there and we'll have some shelter." Edmund suggested.

"Yes, let's," Peter agreed. "No point in getting wetter than we need." But all the time Drinian was steadily steering to the starboard, like tiresome people in cars who continue at forty miles an hour while you are explaining to them that they are on the wrong road.

"They're right, Drinian," Caspian said finally. "Why don't you bring her head round and make for the western stream?"

"As your Majesty pleases," said Drinian a little shortly. He had had an anxious day with the weather yesterday, and he didn't like advice from landsmen. But he altered course; and it turned out afterwards that it was a good thing he did. By the time they had finished watering, the rain was over and Caspian, with Eustace, the Pevensies, and Reepicheep, decided to walk up to the top of the hill and see what could be seen. It was a stiffish climb through coarse grass and heather and they saw neither man nor beast, except seagulls. When they reached the top they saw that it was a very small island, not more than twenty acres; and from this height the sea looked larger and more desolate than it did from the deck, or even the fighting top, of the Dawn Treader.

"Crazy, you know," said Eustace to Lucy in a low voice, looking at the eastern horizon. "Sailing on and on into that with no idea what we may get to." But he only said it out of habit, not really nastily as he would have done at one time. It was too cold to stay long on the ridge for the wind still blew freshly from the north.

"Don't let's go back the same way," said Lucy as they turned; "let's go along a bit and come down by the other stream, the one Drinian wanted to go to."

Everyone agreed to this and after about fifteen minutes they were at the source of the second river. It was a more interesting place than they had expected; a deep little mountain lake, surrounded by cliffs except for a narrow channel on the seaward side out of which the water flowed. Here at last they were out of the wind, and all sat down in the heather above the cliff for a rest. All sat down, but Peter jumped up again very quickly.

"They go in for sharp stones on this island," he said, groping about in the heather. "Where is the wretched thing? . . . Ah, now I've got it . . . It wasn't a stone at all, it's a sword-hilt. No, by jove, it's a whole sword; what the rust has left of it. It must have lain here for ages." He pulled it out and eyed it. Sophia took it and held it in her hand.

"Narnian, too, by the look of it," She said, as they all crowded round.

"I'm sitting on something too," said Lucy. "Something hard." It turned out to be the remains of a mail-shirt. By this time everyone was on thier hands and knees, feeling in the thick heather in every direction. Their search revealed, one by one, a helmet, a dagger, and a few coins; not Calormen crescents but genuine Narnian "Lions" and "Trees" such as you might see any day in the market-place of Beaversdam or Beruna.

"Looks as if this might be all that's left of one of our seven lords," Eustace pointed out.

"Just what I was thinking," Caspian replied. "I wonder which it was. There's nothing on the dagger to show. And I wonder how he died."

"And how we are to avenge him," added Reepicheep.

Edmund, the only one of the party who had read several detective stories, had meanwhile been thinking.

"Look here," he said, "there's something very fishy about this. He can't have been killed in a fight."

"Why not?" Caspian asked.

"No bones," Edmund replied. "An enemy might take the armour and leave the body. But who ever heard of a chap who'd won a fight carrying away the body and leaving the armour?"

"Perhaps he was killed by a wild animal," Lucy suggested.

"It'd be a clever animal," Peter pointed out, "that would take a man's mail shirt off."

"Perhaps a dragon?" Caspian suggested. Eustace immediately shook his head.

"A dragon couldn't do it. I ought to know." He told them. Luc's pace had grown slightly pale.

"Well, let's get away from the place, anyway," she said quickly. She had not felt like sitting down again since Edmund had raised the question of bones.

"If you like," said Caspian, getting up. "I don't think any of this stuff is worth taking away."

They came down and round to the little opening where the stream came out of the lake, and stood looking at the deep water within the circle of cliffs. If it had been a hot day, no doubt some would have been tempted to bathe and everyone would have had a drink. Indeed, even as it was, Eustace was on the very point of stooping down and scooping up some water in his hands when Reepicheep and Lucy both at the same moment cried, "Look," so he forgot about his drink and looked.  
The bottom of the pool was made of large greyish-blue stones and the water was perfectly clear, and on the bottom lay a life-size figure of a man, made apparently of gold. It lay face downwards with its arms stretched out above its head. And it so happened that as they looked at it, the clouds parted and the sun shone out. The golden shape was lit up from end to end. Lucy thought it was the most beautiful statue she had ever seen.

"Well!" whistled Caspian. "That was worth coming to see! I wonder, can we get it out?"

"We can dive for it, Sire," said Reepicheep.

"No good at all," said Edmund. "At least, if it's really gold - solid gold - it'll be far too heavy to bring up. And that pool's twelve or fifteen feet deep if it's an inch. Half a moment, though. It's a good thing I've brought a hunting spear with me. Let's see what the depth is like. Hold on to my hand, Caspian, while I lean out over the water a bit." Caspian took his hand and Edmund, leaning forward, began to lower his spear into the water.

"I don't believe the statue is gold at all. It's only the light. Your spear looks just the same colour." Sophia pointed out.

"What's wrong?" asked several voices at once; for Edmund had suddenly let go of the spear.

"I couldn't hold it," gasped Edmund, "it seemed so heavy."  
"And there it is on the bottom now," said Caspian, "and Lucy is right. It looks just the same colour as the statue."  
But Edmund, who appeared to be having some trouble with his boots - at least he was bending down and looking at them - straightened himself all at once and shouted out in the sharp voice which people hardly ever disobey:

"Get back! Back from the water. All of you. At once!" They all did and stared at him. "Look," said Edmund, "look at the toes of my boots."

"They look a bit yellow," began Eustace.

"They're gold, solid gold," interrupted Edmund. "Look at them. Feel them. The leather's pulled away from it already. And they're as heavy as lead."

"By Aslan!" Peter gasped. "You don't mean to say-?"

"Yes, I do," said Edmund. "That water turns things into gold. It turned the spear into gold, that's why it got so heavy. And it was just lapping against my feet (it's a good thing I wasn't barefoot) and it turned the toe-caps into gold. And that poor fellow on the bottom - well, you see."

"So it isn't a statue at all," said Lucy, voice trembling.

"No. The whole thing is plain now. He was here on a hot day. He undressed on top of the cliff - where we were sitting. The clothes have rotted away or been taken by birds to line nests with; the armour's still there. Then he dived and - "

"Don't," Lucy said quickly. "What a horrible thing." She and Sophia both shuddered.

"And what a narrow shave we've had," said Edmund.

"Narrow indeed," said Reepicheep. "Anyone's finger, anyone's foot, anyone's whisker, or anyone's tail, might have slipped into the water at any moment."

"All the same," Caspian said, "we may as well test it." He stooped down and wrenched up a spray of heather. Then, very cautiously, he knelt beside the pool and dipped it in. It was heather that he dipped; what he drew out was a perfect model of heather made of the purest gold, heavy and soft as lead. "The King who owned this island," Caspian said slowly, and his face flushed as he spoke, "would soon be the richest of all the Kings of the world. I claim this land for ever as a Narnian possession. It shall be called Goldwater Island. And I bind all of you to secrecy. No one must know of this. Not even Drinian - on pain of death, do you hear?"

"Who are you talking to?" Edmund snappd. "I'm no subject of yours. If anything it's the other way round. I am one of the four ancient sovereigns of Narnia and you are under allegiance to the High King my brother." He gestured to Peter who looked at his wife and Lucy for guidance, but neither knew what to do.

"So it has come to that, King Edmund, has it?" said Caspian, laying his hand on his sword-hilt. Lucy's eyes widened and she grew angry.

"Stop it, both of you," She snapped. "That's the worst of doing anything with boys. You're all such swaggering, bullying idiots - oooh! - " Her voice died away into a gasp. And everyone else saw what she had seen. Across the grey hillside above them - grey, for the heather was not yet in bloom - without noise, and without looking at them, and shining as if he were in bright sunlight though the sun had in fact gone in, passed with slow pace the hugest lion that human eyes have ever seen. And they knew it was Aslan. And nobody ever saw how or where he went. They looked at one another like people waking from sleep.

"What were we talking about?" Caspian asked. "Have I been making rather an ass of myself?"

"Sire," said Reepicheep, "this is a place with a curse on it. Let us get back on board at once. And if I might have the honour of naming this island, I should call it Deathwater."

"That strikes me as a very good name, Reep," said Caspian, "though now that I come to think of it, I don't know why. But the weather seems to be settling and I dare say Drinian would like to be off. What a lot we shall have to tell him."

But in fact they had not much to tell for the memory of the last hour had all become confused.

"Their Majesties all seemed a bit bewitched when they came aboard," said Drinian to Rhince some hours later when the Dawn Treader was once more under sail and Deathwater Island already below the horizon. "Something happened to them in that place. The only thing I could get clear was that they think they've found the body of one of these lords we're looking for."  
"You don't say so, Captain," answered Rhince. "Well, that's three. Only four more. At this rate we might be home soon after the New Year. And a good thing too. My baccy's running a bit low. Good night, Sir."


	10. Kidnapped

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Ten: Kidnapped**

The winds which had so long been from the north-west began to blow from the west itself and every morning when the sun rose out of the sea the curved prow of the Dawn Treader stood up right across the middle of the sun. They sailed and sailed before a gentle yet steady breeze seeing no sight of land.

Eventually, they made harbour in a wide bay about the middle of the afternoon and landed. It was a very different country from any they had yet seen. For when they had crossed the sandy beach they found all silent and empty as if it were an uninhabited land, but before them there were level lawns in which the grass was as smooth and short as it used to be in the grounds of a great English house where ten gardeners were kept. The trees, of which there were many, all stood well apart from one another, and there were no broken branches and no leaves lying on the ground. Pigeons sometimes cooed but there was no other noise.

"We might as well rest here" Caspian told the crew. "And search the Island in the morning"

"Indeed" Drinian said. "Indeed"

After they had made camp, The group had a meal of broth and vegetables. Lucy was asked to watch Gael and Razier for the night, so she led them to a patch of soft grass, in sight of the others and took out a book. The moon was bright enough that Lucy was able to read by moonlight, some narnia stories, to help the children fall asleep. The trio fell asleep and Lucy's book rested open on her chest.

As they slept, something peculier happened. There was a noise, like thumping all around. It wasn't loud enough to wake the crew. The thumps were caused by something invisible, for if any of the crew were to awaken, they would be startled to hear the thumps closing in, but see nothing in thier view.

"It seems they've brought a pig with them" A voice said, indicating Eustace, who was snoring.

"Look, there are two girls here" another voice whispered.

"This one can read" still, another said.

Lucy woke up suddenly, finding herself being carried by an invisible force. She struggled, but found that she could not scream. Finally, She felt herself being dropped to the ground. Angered, She grabbed her knife, but it was swiped out of her hand. Lucy looked around nervously.

"What do you want?" Lucy asked, fearfully.

"we need you to do something for us" One of the invisible creatures said. Behind her, an invisible door, swung open.

"What's that?" Lucy asked.

"Well," the voice replied. "It's like this. This island has been the property of a great magician time out of mind. And we all are - or perhaps in a manner of speaking, I might say, we were - his servants. Look, he made us invisible as you can see and we'd very much like to be visible again"

"What does that have to do with me?" Lucy asked.

"Well, then, to put it in a nutshell," said the voice, "we've been waiting for ever so long for a nice little girl from foreign parts, like it might be you, Missie - that would go upstairs and go to the magic book and find the spell that takes off the invisibleness, and say it"

"Why me?" Lucy asked. "Don't you have any daughters of your own?"

"We dursen't, we dursen't," said all the Voices. "We're not going upstairs."

"What if I refuse?" Lucy asked. There was complete silence.

"Then we will kill your friends" The leader, or whom she assumed was the leader, said. Lucy turned to the open door and took a deep breath.

"Fine" She said. "I'll go" She entered the doorway and it swung closed behind her.

The stairway was lit, which was a good thing for Lucy, who hated finding her way in the dark. She wondered what the others would do if they discovered she was gone.

She came to the landing and had to turn to her left up the next flight. Now she had come to the top of the stairs. Lucy looked and saw a long, wide passage with a large window at the far end. Apparently the passage ran the whole length of the invisble house. At least, she guessed it was a house. It was carved and panelled and carpeted and very many doors opened off it on each side. She stood still and couldn't hear the squeak of a mouse, or the buzzing of a fly, or the swaying of a curtain, or anything - except the beating of her own heart.

She wondered which room, for the invisible beings hadn't said. It did seem quite likely that it would be the last door, so she decided to try that one first.

To reach it she would have to walk past room after room. And in any room there might be the magician - asleep, or awake, or invisible. But it wouldn't do to think about that. She set out on her journey. The carpet was so thick that her feet made no noise.

"There's nothing whatever to be afraid of yet," Lucy told herself. And certainly it was a quiet passage; perhaps a bit too quiet. It would have been nicer if there had not been strange signs painted in scarlet on the doors twisty, complicated things which obviously had a meaning and it mightn't be a very nice meaning either. It would have been nicer still if there weren't those masks hanging on the wall. Not that they were exactly ugly - or not so very ugly - but the empty eye-holes did look queer, and if you let yourself you would soon start imagining that the masks were doing things as soon as your back was turned to them.

After about the sixth door she got her first real fright. For one second she felt almost certain that a wicked little bearded face had popped out of the wall and made a grimace at her. She forced herself to stop and look at it. And it was not a face at all. It was a little mirror just the size and shape of her own face, with hair on the top of it and a beard hanging down from it, so that when you looked in the mirror your own face fitted into the hair and beard and it looked as if they belonged to you. "I just caught my own reflection with the tail of my eye as I went past," said Lucy to herself. "That was all it was. It's quite harmless." But she didn't like the look of her own face with that hair and beard, and went on.

Before she reached the last door on the left, Lucy was beginning to wonder whether the corridor had grown longer since she began her journey and whether this was part of the magic. But she got to it at last. And the door was open.

It was a large room with three big windows and it was lined from floor to ceiling with books; more books than Lucy had ever seen before, tiny little books, fat and dumpy books, and books bigger than any church Bible you have ever seen, all bound in leather and smelling old and learned and magical. But she knew that she need not bother about any of these. For the Book, the Magic Book, was lying on a reading-desk in the very middle of the room. She saw she would have to read it standing and also that she would have to stand with her back to the door while she read it. So at once she turned to shut the door.


	11. Discovery

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Eleven: Discovery**

Gael awoke and stretched her arms. It was only then that She noticed that Lucy was gone and that the narnian storybook was ling on the ground open. She shook Razier.

"Razier, wake up" She hissed. He opened his eyes and turned to look at her.

"What is it?" He asked, rather crossly.

"Queen Lucy is gone" Gael said. Razier was up in a flash. He ran over to his parents.

"Father, father" He whispered. Peter and Sophia both woke up and looked at him.

"Aunt Lucy is gone" Razier said. Soon the entire crew was up and searching for her. As they searched the Island, Edmund noticed something on the ground.

"Look. Isn't that Lucy's dagger?" He asked. He made towards it, but a spear hurled out of no where and struck the ground in front of him.

"Don't move" A voice said. "We don't want to kill you"

"Who are you?" Caspian called out.

"We are beasts so feirce that were you to see us, you would died of fright" The voice answered. The Crew eyed eachother nervously.

Lucy, by this time, ad been looking over the book, which didn't seem to want to open. The letters on the cover were in a jumbled mess. As she wondered what to do, a sudden thought struck her and she blew on the book. The letters rearranged themselves to spell of BOOK OF SPELLS. She heard a click and was able to open the book. She wondered where she would find the spell to make one visible again.

The book was written, not printed; written in a clear, even hand, with thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes, very large, easier than print, and so beautiful that Lucy stared at it for a whole minute and forgot about reading it. The paper was crisp and smooth and a nice smell came from it; and in the margins, and round the big coloured capital letters at the beginning of each spell, there were pictures.

She flipped pages, passing spells to cure for warts (by washing your hands in moonlight in a silver basin) and toothache and cramps, and a spell for taking a swarm of bees. The picture of the man with toothache was so lifelike that it would have set your own teeth aching if you looked at it too long, and the golden bees which were dotted all round the fourth spell looked for a moment as if they were really flying.

Lucy flipped page afer page. She went for about thirty pages which, if she could have remembered them, would have taught her how to find buried treasure, how to remember things forgotten, how to forget things you wanted to forget, how to tell whether anyone was speaking the truth, how to call up (or prevent) wind, fog, snow, sleet or rain, how to produce enchanted sleeps and how to give a man an ass's head (as they did to poor Bottom). And the longer she read the more wonderful and more real the pictures became.

Then she came to a page which was such a blaze of pictures that one hardly noticed the writing. Hardly - but she did notice the first words. They were, An infallible spell to make beautiful her that uttered it beyond the lot of mortals. Lucy peered at the pictures with her face close to the page, and though they had seemed crowded and muddlesome before, she found she could now see them quite clearly. The first was a picture of a girl standing at a reading-desk reading in a huge book. And the girl was dressed exactly like Lucy. In the next picture Lucy (for the girl in the picture was Lucy herself) was standing up with her mouth open and a rather terrible expression on her face, chanting or reciting something. In the third picture the beauty beyond the lot of mortals had come to her. It was strange, considering how small the pictures had looked at first, that the Lucy in the picture now seemed quite as big as the real Lucy; and they looked into each other's eyes and the real Lucy looked away after a few minutes because she was dazzled by the beauty of the other Lucy; though she could still see a sort of likeness to herself in that beautiful face.

She looked back at the picture and nodded.

"I will say the spell," said Lucy. "I don't care. I will."

But when she looked back at the opening words of the spell, there in the middle of the writing, where she felt quite sure there had been no picture before, she found the great face of a lion, of The Lion, Aslan himself, staring into hers. It was painted such a bright gold that it seemed to be coming towards her out of the page; and indeed she never was quite sure afterwards that it hadn't really moved a little. At any rate she knew the expression on his face quite well. He was growling and you could see most of his teeth. She became horribly afraid and turned over the page at once.

She turned on and found to her surprise a page with no pictures at all; but the first words were A Spell to make hidden things visible. She read it through to make sure of all the hard words and then said it out loud. And she knew at once that it was working because as she spoke the colours came into the capital letters at the top of the page and the pictures began appearing in the margins. They were odd pictures and contained many figures that Lucy did not much like the look of. And then she thought,

"I suppose I've made everything visible, and not only the Thumpers. There might be lots of other invisible things hanging about a place like this. I'm not sure that I want to see them all."

At that moment she heard soft, heavy footfalls coming along the corridor behind her; and of course she remembered what she had been told about the Magician walking in his bare feet and making no more noise than a cat. It is always better to turn round than to have anything creeping up behind your back. Lucy did so.

Then her face lit up till, for a moment, she looked almost as beautiful as that other Lucy in the picture, and she ran forward with a little cry of delight and with her arms stretched out. For what stood in the doorway was Aslan himself, The Lion, the highest of all High Kings. And he was solid and real and warm and he let her kiss him and bury herself in his shining mane. And from the low, earthquake-like sound that came from inside him, Lucy even dared to think that he was purring.

"Oh, Aslan," She said, "it was kind of you to come."

"I have been here all the time," he replied, "but you have just made me visible."

"Aslan!" Lucy said reproachfully. "Don't make fun of me. As if anything 1 could do would make you visible!"

"It did," Aslan assured. "Do you think I wouldn't obey my own rules?"

After a little pause he spoke again.

"Child," he said, "You doubt your value." He said it very simply and Lucy hung her head.

"I just wanted to be beautiful, like Susan" She whispered.

""Child," Aslan spoke, this time reproachfully, "The innocence you posess is what makes you beautiful. Do not doubt your worth. Susan is beautiful yes, but so are you. We can never be like someone else, we must only be ourselves. Do you understand, dear one?"

"Yes, Aslan" Lucy replied.

"Good" Aslan said. "Now there is someone I'd like for you to meet"


	12. Coriakin

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Twelve: Coriakin**

Lucy followed the great Lion out into the passage and at once she saw coming towards them an old man, barefoot, dressed in a red robe. His white hair was crowned with a chaplet of oak leaves, his beard fell to his girdle, and he supported himself with a curiously carved staff. When he saw Aslan he bowed low and said,

"Welcome, Sir, to the least of your houses."

"Do you grow weary, Coriakin, of ruling such foolish subjects as I have given you here?" Aslan asked

"No," said the Magician, "they are very stupid but there is no real harm in them. I begin to grow rather fond of the creatures. Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic."

"All in good time, Coriakin," said Aslan.

"Yes, all in very good time, Sir," was the answer. "Do you intend to show yourself to them?"

"Nay," said the Lion, with a little half-growl that meant (Lucy thought) the same as a laugh. "I should frighten them out of their senses. Many stars will grow old and come to take their rest in islands before your people are ripe for that. And today before sunset I must visit Trumpkin the Dwarf where he sits in the castle of Cair Paravel counting the days till his master Caspian comes home. I will tell him all your story, Lucy. Do not look so sad. We shall meet soon again."

"Please, Aslan," said Lucy, "what do you call soon?"

"I call all times soon," said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away and Lucy was alone with the Magician.

The crew were still being held at bay by the invisible creatures when suddenly the creatures invisibility began to wear off and the crew saw them for what they really were. Dwarfs with one foot that were standing on top of each other to seem taller. As they noticed they were visible, the toppled over and fell. Edmund unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the chief's chin.

"Where is my sister, you little pipsqueak?" He asked.

"In the mansion" The chief said quivering.

"What mansion?" Edmund asked, looking around. Suddenly, a giant mansion became visible. "Oh, that mansion" He muttered, sheathing his sword. They saw Lucy and an elderly gentleman coming from the courtyard.

"It would be a pity to change them back," said Lucy. "They're so funny: and they're rather nice. Do you think it would make any difference if I told them that?"

"This is Coriakin" She said, "It's his Island" The chief looked at Coriakin furiously.

"you have wronged us" He said fearfully.

"I have not wronged you" Coriakin said, "Now begone" He threw some dust at them and they thumped away.

"What were those things?" Eustace asked.

"Dufflepuds" Coriakin replied. Eustace furrowed his brow, but said nothing.

"Follow me" Coriakin said, leading them into the mansion. He showed them into a room, where there was a giant lifelike map across the floor. "This is the whole of the eastern sea" He told them.

"We're searching for the last of the missing lords of narnia" Caspian said. "Did they pass this way?"

"Yes they did" Coriakin replied. "They were weary and tired when they reached the island. They journeyed onward to this Island" He pointed to an Island on the map.

"Why there?" Sophia asked.

"Because that is where I told them to go" Coriakin said. "It is an Island of plentiful food and rest. They needed it"

"Will they still be there?" Lucy asked.

"It's hard to say you're majesty" Coriakin replied. "They have not passed back this way" He snapped his fingers and a blue star rose up from the map.

"This star will guide you to the island" He told them.

That evening all the Narnians dined with Coriakin. At dinner everyone had by magic what they liked best to eat and drink, and after dinner Coriakin showed off his magic.

The next day, the Magician magically mended the stern of the Dawn Treader where it had been damaged by the Sea Serpent and loaded her with useful gifts. And then the Narnians were on thier way, following the blue star.


	13. Dark Island

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Thirteen: Dark Island**

After departing the Island, they sailed on south, following the blue star for twelve days with a gentle wind. The skies were mostly clear and the air warm. Lucy and Reepicheep played a good deal of chess at this time, though Reep always seemed to win. Then on the thirteenth day, the blue star seemed to vanish in the clouds and Edmund, from the fighting top, sighted what looked like a great dark mountain rising out of the sea on their port bow.

They altered course and made for this land, mostly by oar, for the wind would not serve them to sail north-east. When evening fell they were still a long way from it and rowed all night. The next morning the weather was fair but a flat calm. The dark mass lay ahead, much nearer and larger, but still very dim, so that some thought it was still a long way off and others thought they were running into a mist.

About nine that morning, very suddenly, it was so close that they could see that it was not land at all, nor even, in an ordinary sense, a mist. It was a Darkness. For a few feet in front of their bows they could see the swell of the bright greenish-blue water. Beyond that, they could see the water looking pale and grey as it would look late in the evening. But beyond that again, utter blackness as if they had come to the edge of moonless and starless night.

Caspian shouted to the boatswain to keep her back, and all except the rowers rushed forward and gazed from the bows. But there was nothing to be seen by gazing. Behind them was the sea and the sun, before them the Darkness.

"Do we go into this?" Peter asked, worriedly.

"Not by my advice," Drinian replied.

"The Captain's right," Caspian said, looking out at the darkness.

"I almost think he is," Edmund agreed. Sophie took Razier and Gael below deck, just incase.

Lucy and Eustace didn't speak but they felt very glad inside at the turn things seemed to be taking. But all at once the clear voice of Reepicheep broke in upon the silence.

"And why not?" he said. "Will someone explain to me why not."

No one was anxious to explain, so Reepicheep continued:

"If I were addressing peasants or slaves," he said, "I might suppose that this suggestion proceeded from cowardice. But I hope it will never be told in Narnia that a company of noble and royal persons in the flower of their age turned tail because they were afraid of the dark."

"But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that blackness?" Drinian asked.

"Use?" Reepicheep replied. "Use, Captain? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventure. And here is as great an adventure as ever I heard of, and here, if we turn back, no tittle impeachment of all our honours."

"Oh, bother you, Reepicheep. I almost wish we'd left you at home" Caspian snapped. "All right! If you put it that way, I suppose we shall have to go on. Unless Lucy would rather not?" They all turned to look at the youngest crew member besides the children.

Lucy felt that she would very much rather not, but what she said out loud was,

"I'm game."

"Your Majesty will at least order lights?" Drinian asked.

"By all means," Caspian replied. "See to it, Captain."

So the three lanterns, at the stern, and the prow and the masthead, were all lit, and Drinian ordered two torches amidships. Pale and feeble they looked in the sunshine. Then all the men except some who were left below at the oars were ordered on deck and fully armed and posted in their battle stations with swords drawn. Lucy and two archers were posted on the fighting top with bows bent and arrows on the string. Rynelf was in the bows with his line ready to take soundings. Reepicheep, Edmund, Eustace and Caspian, glittering in mail, were with him. Drinian and Rhince took the tiller.

"And now, in Aslan's name, forward!" Caspian shouted. "A slow, steady stroke. And let every man be silent and keep his ears open for orders."

With a creak and a groan the Dawn Treader started to creep forward as the men began to row. Lucy, up in the fighting top, had a wonderful view of the exact moment at which they entered the darkness. The bows had already disappeared before the sunlight had left the stern. She saw it go. At one minute the gilded stern, the blue sea, and the sky, were all in broad daylight: next minute the sea and sky had vanished, the stern lantern - which had been hardly noticeable before - was the only thing to show where the ship ended. In front of the lantern she could see the black shape of Drinian crouching at the tiller. Down below her the two torches made visible two small patches of deck and gleamed on swords and helmets, and forward there was another island of light on the forecastle. Apart from that, the fighting top, lit by the masthead light which was only just above her, seemed to be a little lighted world of its own floating in lonely darkness. And the lights themselves, as always happens with lights when you have to have them at the wrong time of day, looked lurid and unnatural. She also noticed that she was suddenly very cold.

"What's going on?" Gael whimpered as Sophia held the kids close.

"Uncle Caspian has decided to go into the darkness" She whispered. "Don't worry. Everything will be alright"

How long this voyage into the darkness lasted, nobody knew. Except for the creak of the rowlocks and the splash of the oars there was nothing to show that they were moving at all. Edmund, peering from the bows, could see nothing except the reflection of the lantern in the water before him. It looked a greasy sort of reflection, and the ripple made by their advancing prow appeared to be heavy, small, and lifeless. As time went on everyone except the rowers began to shiver with cold.

Suddenly, from somewhere - no one's sense of direction was very clear by now - there came a cry, either of some inhuman voice or else a voice of one in such extremity of terror that he had almost lost his humanity.

Caspian was still trying to speak - his mouth was too dry - when the shrill voice of Reepicheep, which sounded louder than usual in that silence, was heard.

"Who calls?" it piped. "If you are a foe we do not fear you, and if you are a friend your enemies shall be taught the fear of us."

"Mercy!" cried the voice. "Mercy! Even if you are only one more dream, have mercy. Take me on board. Take me, even if you strike me dead. But in the name of all mercies do not fade away and leave me in this horrible land."

"Where are you?" shouted Caspian. "Come aboard and welcome."

There came another cry, whether of joy or terror, and then they knew that someone was swimming towards them.

"Stand by to heave him up, men," said Caspian.

"Aye, aye, your Majesty," said the sailors. Several crowded to the port bulwark with ropes and one, leaning far out over the side, held the torch. A wild, white face appeared in the blackness of the water, and then, after some scrambling and pulling, a dozen friendly hands had heaved the stranger on board.

Edmund thought he had never seen a wilder-looking man. Though he did not otherwise look very old, his hair was an untidy mop of white, his face was thin and drawn, and, for clothing, only a few wet rags hung about him. But what one mainly noticed were his eyes, which were so widely opened that he seemed to have no eyelids at all, and stared as if in an agony of pure fear. The moment his feet reached the deck he said:

"Fly! Fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore."

"Compose yourself," said Reepicheep, "and tell us what the danger is. We are not used to flying."

The stranger started horribly at the voice of the Mouse, which he had not noticed before.

"Nevertheless you will fly from here," he gasped. "This is the Island where Dreams come true."

"That's the island I've been looking for this long time," said one of the sailors. "I reckoned I'd find I was married to Nancy if we landed here."

"And I'd find Tom alive again," said another.

"Fools!" said the man, stamping his foot with rage. "That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I'd better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams - dreams, do you understand, come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams."

There was about half a minute's silence and then, with a great clatter of armour, the whole crew were tumbling down the main hatch as quick as they could and flinging themselves on the oars to row as they had never rowed before; and Drinian was swinging round the tiller, and the boatswain was giving out the quickest stroke that had ever been heard at sea. For it had taken everyone just that halfminute to remember certain dreams they had had - dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again - and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.

Only Reepicheep remained unmoved.

"Your Majesty, your Majesty," he said, "are you going to tolerate this mutiny, this poltroonery? This is a panic, this is a rout."

"Row, row," bellowed Caspian. "Pull for all our lives. Is her head right, Drinian? You can say what you like, Reepicheep. There are some things no man can face."

"It is, then, my good fortune not to be a man," replied Reepicheep with a very stiff bow.

Lucy from up aloft had heard it all. In an instant that one of her own dreams which she had tried hardest to forget came back to her as vividly as if she had only just woken from it. So that was what was behind them, on the island, in the darkness! For a second she wanted to go down to the deck and be with Edmund and Caspian. But what was the use? If dreams began coming true, Edmund and Caspian themselves might turn into something horrible just as she reached them. She gripped the rail of the fighting top and tried to steady herself. They were rowing back to the light as hard as they could: it would be all right in a few seconds. But oh, if only it could be all right now!

Though the rowing made a good deal of noise it did not quite conceal the total silence which surrounded the ship.

Everyone knew it would be better not to listen, not to strain his ears for any sound from the darkness. But no one could help listening. And soon everyone was hearing things. Each one heard something different.

"Do you hear a noise like . . . like a huge pair of scissors opening and shutting .. . over there?" Eustace asked Rynelf.

"Hush!" Rynelf whispered. "I can hear them crawling up the sides of the ship." He put his hands over his ears.

"It's just going to settle on the mast," said Caspian. Suddenly they heard a screaming from below. It was Gael.

"This is why we must leave, Reep!" Peter bellowed. "The children are suffering too"

"Ugh!" said a sailor. "There are the gongs beginning. I knew they would."

Caspian, trying not to look at anything, went to Drinian.

"Drinian," he said in a very low voice. "How long did we take rowing in? - I mean rowing to where we picked up the stranger."

"Five minutes, perhaps," whispered Drinian. "Why?"

"Because we've been more than that already trying to get out." Caspian replied, face ashen.

Drinian's hand shook on the tiller and a line of cold sweat ran down his face. The same idea was occurring to everyone on board.

"We shall never get out, never get' out," moaned the rowers. "He's steering us wrong. We're going round and round in circles. We shall never get out."

The stranger, who had been lying in a huddled heap on the deck, sat up and burst out into a horrible screaming laugh.

"Never get out!" he yelled. "That's it. Of course. We shall never get out. What a fool I was to have thought they would let me go as easily as that. No, no, we shall never get out."

Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting top and whispered, "Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now." The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little - a very, very little - better. "After all, nothing has really happened to us yet," she thought.

"Look!" cried Rynelf's voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight. Caspian blinked, stared round, saw the faces of his companions all with wild, fixed expressions. Everyone was staring in the same direction: behind everyone lay his black, sharply-edged shadow.

Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. as it came closer with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was a dove. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "Courage, dear heart," and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.

In a few moments the darkness turned into a greyness ahead, and then, almost before they dared to begin hoping, they had shot out into the sunlight and were in the warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been. They blinked their eyes and looked about them. The brightness of the ship herself astonished them: they had half expected to find that the darkness would cling to the white and the green and the gold in the form of some grime or scum. And then first one, and then another, began laughing.

"I reckon we've made pretty good fools of ourselves," Rynelf said. Sophia and the two children ventured up on deck, little Gael was still shaking, so Rhince scooped her up and hugged her tightly.

Lucy lost no time in coming down to the deck, where she found them all gathered round the newcomer. For a long time he was too happy to speak, and could only gaze at the sea and the sun and feel the bulwarks and the ropes, as if to make sure he was really awake, while tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Thank you," he said at last. "You have saved me from . . . but I won't talk of that. And now let me know who you are. I am a Telmarine of Narnia, and when I was worth anything men called me the Lord Rhoop."

"And I," Caspian replied, "am Caspian, King of Narnia, and I sail to find you and your companions who were my father's friends."

Lord Rhoop fell on his knees and kissed the King's hand. "Sire," he said, "you are the man in all the world I most wished to see. Grant me a boon."

"What is it?" asked Caspian.

"Never to bring me back there," he said. He pointed astern. They all looked. But they saw only bright blue sea and bright blue sky. The Dark Island and the darkness had vanished for ever.

"Why!" cried Lord Rhoop. "You have destroyed it!"

"I don't think it was us," Lucy whispered.

"Sire," said Drinian, "this wind is fair for the southeast. Shall I have our poor fellows up and set sail? And after that, every man who can be spared, to his hammock."

"Yes," said Caspian, "and let there be grog all round. Heigh-ho, I feel I could sleep the clock round myself."

So all afternoon with great joy they sailed south-east with a fair wind. But nobody noticed when the dove had disappeared.


	14. Enchanted Sleep

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Fourteen: Enchanted Sleep**

The wind grew gentler every day until the waves were little more than ripples, and the ship glided on hour after hour almost as if they were sailing on a lake. And every night they saw that there rose in the east new constellations which no one had ever seen in Narnia and perhaps, as Lucy thought with a mixture of joy and fear, no living eye had seen at all. Those new stars were big and bright and the nights were warm. The blue star, was of course the brightest of them all, as it continued to lead the way. Most of the crew slept on deck and talked far into the night or hung over the ship's side watching the luminous dance of the foam thrown up by their bows. Razier and Gael were not allowed to stay up as late, and had to sleep in thier cabin.

On an evening of startling beauty, when the sunset behind them was so crimson and purple and widely spread that the very sky itself seemed to have grown larger, they came in sight of land on their starboard bow. It came slowly nearer and the light behind them made it look as if the capes and headlands of this new country were all on fire. But presently they were sailing along its coast and its western cape now rose up astern of them, black against the red sky and sharp as if it was cut out of cardboard, and then they could see better what this country was like. It had no mountains but many gentle hills with slopes like pillows.

"That must be it" Caspian said, as the blue star continued towards land.

Though it had seemed calm out at sea there was of course surf breaking on the sand and they could not bring the Dawn Treader as far in as they would have liked. They dropped anchor a good way from the beach and had a wet and tumbling landing in the boat. The Lord Rhoop remained on board the Dawn Treader. He wished to see no more islands.

Peter and Caspian ordered two men to guard the boat and Rhoop, while the rest of them went inland. the blue star floated steadily ahead of them.

The level valley which lay at the head of the bay showed no road or track or other sign of habitation.

When they had gone less than a bowshot from the shore, Drinian spotted something.

"Look! What's that?" He pointed ahead and everyone stopped.

"Are they great trees?" Razier asked, tugging on his mother's hand.

"Towers, l think," Eustace replied.

"It might be giants," Edmund whispered.

"The way to find out is to go right in among them," Reepicheep declared, drawing his sword and pattering off ahead of everyone else.

"I think it's a ruin," Lucy exclaimed when they had gotten a good deal nearer, and her guess was the best so far. What they now saw was a wide oblong space flagged with smooth stones and surrounded by grey pillars but unroofed. And from end to end of it ran a long table laid with a rich crimson cloth that came down nearly to the pavement. At either side of it were many chairs of stone richly carved and with silken cushions upon the seats. But on the table itself there was set out such a banquet as had never been seen, not even when Peter kept his court at Cair Paravel during the Golden Age. There were turkeys and geese and peacocks, there were boars' heads and sides of venison, there were pies shaped like ships under full sail or like dragons and elephants, there were ice puddings and bright lobsters and gleaming salmon, there were nuts and grapes, pineapples and peaches, pomegranates and melons and tomatoes. There were flagons of gold and silver and curiouslywrought glass; and the smell of the fruit and the wine blew towards them like a promise of all happiness.

"Well I never," Lucy exclaimed.

They came nearer and nearer, all very quietly.

"But where are the guests?" Eustace wondered.

"We can provide that, Sir," Rhince replied hopefully.

"Look!" Edmund said sharply. They were actually within the pillars now and standing on the pavement. Everyone looked where Edmund had pointed. The chairs were not all empty. At the head of the table and in the two places beside it there was something - or possibly three somethings.

"What are those?" Gael asked in a whisper. She clung to her father's hand.

"Or a huge bird's nest," Edmund muttered.

"It looks more like a haystack to me," Caspian said. None of them were quite ready to find out, but Reepicheep ran forward, jumped on a chair and thence on to the table, and ran along it, threading his way as nimbly as a dancer between jewelled cups and pyramids of fruit and - ivory salt-cellars. He ran right up to the mysterious grey mass at the end: peered, touched, and then called out:

"These will not fight, I think."

Everyone now came closer and saw that what sat in those three chairs were three men, though hard to recognize as men till you looked closely. Their hair, which was grey, had grown over their eyes till it almost concealed their, faces, and their beards had grown over the table, climbing pound and entwining plates and goblets as brambles; entwine a fence, until, all mixed in one great mat of hair, they flowed over the edge and down to the floor. And from their heads the hair hung over the backs of their chairs so that they were wholly hidden. In fact the three men were; nearly all hair.

"Dead?" Caspian asked.

"I think not, Sire," Reepicheep replied, lifting one of their hands out of its tangle of hair in his two paws. "This one is warm and his pulse beats."

"This one, too, and this," Drinian said checking the others.

"Why, they're only asleep," Razier said in wonder, poking one of them Sophia pulled him away, quickly.

"It's been a long sleep, though," Peter said, "to let their hair grow like this."

"It must be an enchanted sleep," said Lucy. "I felt the moment we landed on this island that it was full of magic. Oh! do you think we have perhaps come here to break it?"

"We can try," Caspian replied, and began shaking the nearest of the three sleepers. For a moment everyone thought he was going to be successful, for the man breathed hard and muttered,

"I'll go eastward no more. Out oars for Narnia." But he sank back almost at once into a yet deeper sleep than before: that is, his heavy head sagged a few inches lower towards the table and all efforts to rouse him again were useless. With the second it was much the same.

"Weren't born to live like animals. Get to the east while you've a chance - lands behind the sun," and sank down. And the third only said,

"Mustard, please," and slept hard.

"Out oars for Narnia, eh?" said Drinian.

"Yes," Caspian said, "you are right, Drinian. I think our quest is at an end. Let's look at their rings. Yes, these are their devices. This is the Lord Revilian. This is the Lord Argoz: and this, the Lord Mavramorn. They did come here, just as Coriakin told us"

"But we can't wake them," Lucy said. "What are we to do?"

"Begging your Majesties' pardons all," Rhince suggested, "but why not fall to while you're discussing it? We don't see a dinner like this every day."

"Not for your life!" Caspian said quickly.

"Depend upon it," Reepicheep announced, "it was from eating this food that these three lords came by a seven years' sleep."

"I wouldn't touch it to save my life," Peter admitted.

"The light's going uncommon quick," Rynelf said.

"I really think," Edmund began, "they're right. We can decide what to do with the three sleepers tomorrow. We daren't eat the food and there's no point in staying here for the night. The whole place smells of magic - and danger."

"I am entirely of King Edmund's opinion," Reepicheep replied, "as far as concerns the ship's company in general. But I myself will sit at this table till sunrise."

"Why on earth?" Eustace asked.

"Because," said the Mouse, "this is a very great adventure, and no danger seems to me so great as that of knowing when I get back to Narnia that I left a mystery behind me through fear."

"I'll stay with you, Reep," Edmund said quickly.

"And I too," Caspian announced.

"And me," Lucy replied. And then Eustace volunteered also.

This was very brave of him because never having read of such things or even heard of them till he joined the Dawn Treader made it worse for him than for the others.

Peter and Sophia glanced at each other uneasily but eventually agreed to stay if Rhince would take Razier and Gael back to the ship with Drinian.

As the crew marched off to the shore in the gathering dusk none of the watchers, except perhaps Reepicheep, could avoid a cold feeling in the stomach.

They took some time choosing their seats at the perilous table. Probably everyone had the same reason but no one said it out loud. For it was really a rather nasty choice. One could hardly bear to sit all night next to those three terrible hairy objects which, if not dead, were certainly not alive in the ordinary sense. On the other hand, to sit at the far end, so that you would see them less and less as the night grew darker, and wouldn't know if they were moving, and perhaps wouldn't see them at all by about two o'clock no, it was not to be thought of. So they sauntered round and round the table saying,

"What about here?" and

"Or perhaps a bit further on," or,

"Why not on this side?" till at last they settled down somewhere about the middle but nearer to the sleepers than to the other end. It was about ten by now and almost dark. Those strange new constellations burned in the east. Lucy would have liked it better if they had been the Leopard and the Ship and other old friends of the Narnian sky.

They wrapped themselves in their sea cloaks and sat still and waited. At first there was some attempt at talk but it didn't come to much. And they sat and sat. And all the time they heard the waves breaking on the beach.

After hours that seemed like ages there came a moment when they all knew they had been dozing a moment before but were all suddenly wide awake. The stars were all in quite different positions from those they had last noticed. The sky was very black except for the faintest possible greyness in the east. They were cold, though thirsty, and stiff. And none of them spoke because now at last something was happening.

The blue star, that had hovered above them through this whole ordeal, was now descending to the ground. As the star touched the ground, A beautiful girl appeared.

She was dressed in a single long garment of clear blue which left her arms bare. She was bareheaded and her yellow hair hung down her back. And when they looked at her they thought they had never before known what beauty meant.

Lucy now noticed something lying lengthwise on the table which had escaped her attention before. It was a knife of stone, sharp as steel, a cruel-looking, ancient looking thing.

No one had yet spoken a word. Then - Reepicheep first, and Caspian next - they all rose to their feet, because they felt that she was a great lady.

"My name is Liliendil" She said. "But please, why do you not eat and drink?"

"Madam," Caspian said, "we feared the food because we thought it had cast our friends into an enchanted sleep"

"They have never tasted it," she replied.

"Please," Lucy said, "what happened to them?"

"Seven years ago," Liliendil explained, "they came here in a ship whose sails were rags and timbers ready to fall apart. There were a few others with them, sailors, and when they came to this table one said, `Here is the good place. Let us set sail and reef sail and row no longer but sit down and end our days in peace!' And the second said, `No, let us re-embark and sail for Narnia and the west; it may be that Miraz is dead.' But the third, who was a very masterful man, leaped up and said, `No, by heaven. We are men and Telmarines, not brutes. What should we do but seek adventure after adventure? We have not long to live in any event. Let us spend what is left in seeking the unpeopled world behind the sunrise.' And as they quarrelled he caught up the Knife of Stone which lies there on the table and would have fought with his comrades. But it is a thing not right for him to touch. And as his fingers closed upon the hilt, deep sleep fell upon all the three. And till the enchantment is undone they will never wake."

"What is this Knife of Stone?" asked Eustace.

"Do none of you know it?" she asked.

"I - I think," said Lucy, "I've seen something like it before. It was a knife like it that the White Witch used when she killed Aslan at the Stone Table long ago."

"It was the same," Liliendil replied, "and it was brought here to be kept in honour while the world lasts."

Edmund, who had been looking more and more uncomfortable for the last few minutes, now spoke.

"I apologize before hand, my lady" he said, "I do not wish to appear a coward- about eating this food, I mean - and I'm sure I don't mean to be rude. But we have had a lot of queer adventures on this voyage of ours and things aren't always what they seem. When I look in your face I can't help believing all you say: but then that's just what might happen with a witch too. How are we to know you're a friend?" Liliendil turned to look at Edmund.

"You have been through much, Son of Adam" She replied. "You have been tricked by beauty before, have you not?" Edmund looked at the ground, avoiding her eyes and she smiled. "Unfortunately, You can not know that I speak truth. You can only believe or not."

After a moment's pause Reepicheep's small voice was heard.

"Sire," he said to Caspian, "of your courtesy fill my cup with wine from that flagon: it is too big for me to lift. I will drink to the lady."

Caspian obeyed and the Mouse, standing on the table, held up a golden cup between its tiny paws and said,

"Lady, I pledge you." Then it fell to on cold peacock, and in a short while everyone else followed its example. All were very hungry and the meal, if not quite what you wanted for a very early breakfast, was excellent as a very late supper.

"Why is it called Aslan's table?" Lucy asked presently.

"It is set here by his bidding," Liliendil replied, "for those who come so far. Some call this island the World's End, for though you can sail further, this is the beginning of the end."

"But how does the food keep?" asked the practical Eustace.

"It is eaten, and renewed every day," liliendil told him. "This you will see."

"And what are we to do about the Lords?" asked Caspian. "In the world from which my friends come" (here, he nodded at Eustace and the Pevensies) "they have a story of a prince or a king coming to a castle where all the people lay in an enchanted sleep. In that story he could not dissolve the enchantment until he had kissed the Princess."

"But here," Liliendil said, smirking, "it is different. Here he cannot kiss the Princess till he has dissolved the enchantment."

"Then," Caspian replied, "in the name of Aslan, show me how to set about that work at once."

"My father will teach you that," Liliendil replied. "Look," She said, turning round and pointing at the door in the hillside. They could see it more easily now, for while they had been talking the stars had grown fainter and great gaps of white light were appearing in the greyness of the eastern sky.


	15. The beginning of the End

**The Chronicles of Narnia: The Telmarine Princess 2**

**Voyage of the Dawn Treader**

**Chapter Fifteen: The beginning of the End**

Slowly the door opened again and an old man stepped out to face them. His silver beard came down to his bare feet in front and his hair hung down to his heels behind. The robe he wore, appeared to have been made from the fleece of silver sheep. He looked so mild and grave that all of the travelers rose to their feet and stood in an empty silence.

But the old man came on without speaking to the travelers and stood on the other side of the table opposite to his daughter. Then both of them held up their arms before them and turned to face the east. In that position they began to sing. The melody was beautiful and Lucy sighed wistfully, listening to the song. It was no song that she knew, but that was to be expected, for she was not of this world. As they sang, the grey clouds lifted from the eastern sky and the sea began to shine like silver. And long afterwards the east began to turn red and at last, unclouded, the sun came up out the sea and its long level ray shot down the length of the table on the gold and silver sand on the Stone Knife.

Then something seemed to be flying at them out of the very center of the rising sun. The air became full of voices - voices which took up same song that Liliandil and her Father were singing, but in far wilder tones and in a language which no one knew. Soon afterwards the owners of these voices could be seen. They were birds, large and white, and they came hundreds and thousands and alighted on everything; the grass, and the pavement, on the table, on your shoulders, your hands, and your head, till it looked as heavy snow had fallen. For, like snow, they not only made everything white but blurred and blunted all shapes. But Lucy, looking out from between the wings of the birds that covered her, saw one bird fly to the Old Man with something in its beak that looked like a little fruit, unless it was a little live coal, which it might have been, for it was too bright to look at. And the bird laid it in the Old Man's mouth.

Then the birds stopped their singing and appeared to be very busy about the table. When they rose from it again everything on the table that could be eaten or drunk had disappeared. These birds rose from their meal in their thousands and hundreds and carried away all the things that could not be eaten or drunk, such as bones, rinds, and shells, and took their flight back to the rising sun. But now, because they were not singing, the whir of their wings seemed to set the whole air a-tremble. And there was the table pecked clean and empty, and the three old Lords of Narnia still fast asleep.

Now at last the Old Man turned to the travelers.

"Welcome to our Island" The Old man greeted them. Caspian looked at Sophia and she nodded slightly and he stepped forward.

"Sir," He began, "Will you tell us how to undo the enchantment which holds these three Narnian Lords asleep."

"I will gladly tell you that, my son," the Old Man replied. "To break this enchantment you must sail to the World's End, or as near as you can come to it, and you must come back having left at least one of your company behind."

"And what must happen to that one?" Reepicheep asked, very curiously, for this was the sort of thing that most interested him.

"He must go on into the utter east and never return into the world." The old man told him.

"That is my heart's desire," Reepicheep proclaimed.

"And are we near the World's End now, Sir?" Peter asked quietly. "Have you any knowledge of the seas and lands further east than this?"

"I saw them long ago," the Old Man informed them, "but it was from a great height. I cannot tell you such things as sailor need to know."

"Do you mean you were flying in the air?" Eustace blurted out, unable to keep quiet. The old man smiled at him.

"I was a long way above the air, my son," He replied. "I am Ramandu. But I see that you stare at on another and have not heard this name. And no wonder, for the days when I was a star had ceased long before any of you knew this world, and all the constellations have changed."

"Golly," Edmund whispered under his breath. "He's a retired star." Lucy, Eustace and Edmund exchanged glances, but it was Sophia who spoke.

"Are you no longer a star?" She asked.

"I am a star at rest, my daughter," Ramandu answered her. "When I set for the last time, decrepit and old beyond all that you can reckon, I was carried to this island. I am not so old now as I was then. Every morning a bird brings me a fire-berry from the valleys in the Sun, and each fire-berry takes away a little of my age. And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again and once more tread the great dance."

"In our world," Eustace began, thoughtfully, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas." Lucy nudged him and he frowned, but Ramandu took no offense.

"Even in your world, my son," He replied, "That is not what a star is but only what it is made of. And in this world you have already met a star, for I think you have been with Coriakin."

"Is he a retired star, too?" Lucy questioned.

"Well, not quite the same," Ramandu began. "It was not quite as a rest than he was set to govern the Duffers. You might call it a punishment. He might have shone for thousands of years more in the southern winter sky if all had gone well."

"What did he do, Sir?" Caspian asked, unsure of himself. Ramandu shook his head.

"My son," He explained, "it is not for you, a son of Adam, to know what faults a star can commit. But come, we waste time in such talk. Are you yet resolved? Will you sail further east and come again, leaving one to return no more, and so break the enchantment? Or will you sail westward?"

"Surely, Sire," said Reepicheep, "there is no question about that? It is very plainly part of our quest to rescue these three lords from enchantment."

"I think the same, Reepicheep," Caspian replied. "And even if it were not so, it would break my heart not to go as near the World's End as the Dawn Treader will take us. But I am thinking of the crew. They signed on to seek the seven lords, not to reach the rim of the Earth. If we sail east from here we sail to find the edge, the utter east. And not one knows how far it is. They're brave fellows, but I set signs that some of them are weary of the voyage and long to have our prow pointing to Narnia again. I don't think we should take them further without their knowledge an consent. And then there's the poor Lord Rhoop. He's broken man." Sophia and Peter nodded their agreement with Caspian's assessment.

"My son," Ramandu replied, "it would be no use, as you say, to sail for the World's End with men unwilling or men deceived. That is not how great un enchantments are achieved. They must know where they go and why. But who is this broken man you speak of?" Caspian explained the tale of Lord Rhoop and the Island of Dreams. "I can give him what he needs most. On this island there is sleep without stint or measure, and sleep in which no faintest footfall of a dream was ever heard. Let him sit beside these other three and drink oblivion till you return."

"Oh, do let's do that, Caspian," Lucy said. "I'm sure its just what he would love." And so it was agreed, but at that moment they were interrupted by the sound of many feet and voices: Drinian and the rest of the ship company were approaching. They halted in surprise whey they saw Ramandu and his daughter; and then, because these were obviously great people, every man uncovered his head. Some sailors eyed the empty dishes and flagons on the table with regret.

"My lord," Caspian began to Drinian, "Pray send two men back to the Dawn Treader with a message to the Lord Rhoop. Tell him that the last of his old shipmates are here asleep - a sleep without dreams - and that he can share it."

When this had been done, Caspian told the rest to sit down and laid the whole situation before them. When he had finished there was a long silence and some whispering until presently the Master Bowman got to his feet, and said:

"What some of us have been wanting to ask for a long time, your Majesty, is how we're ever to get home when we do turn, whether we turn here or somewhere else. It's been west and north-west winds all the way, barring an occasional calm. And if that doesn't change, I'd like to know what hopes we have of seeing Narnia again. There's not much chance of supplies lasting while we row all that way.

"That's landsman's talk," Drinian replied. "There's always a prevailing west wind in these seas all through the late summer, and it always changes after the New Year. We'll have plenty of wind for sailing westward; more than we shall like from all accounts."

"That's true, Master," said an old sailor who was a Galmian by birth. "You get some ugly weather rolling up from the east in January and February. And by your leave, Sire, if I was in command of this ship I'd say to winter here and begin the voyage home in March."

"What'd you eat while you were wintering here?" asked Eustace.

"This table," Ramandu told them, "will be filled with a king's feast every day at sunset."

"Now you're talking!" several of the sailors said and began discussing this among themselves.

"Your Majesties and gentlemen and ladies all," Rynelf said, gaining their attention, "there's just one thing I want to say. There's not one of us chaps as was pressed on this journey. We're volunteers. And there's some here chat are looking very hard at that table and thinking about king's feasts who were talking very loud about adventures on the day we sailed from Cair Paravel, and swearing they wouldn't come home till we'd found the end of the world. And there were some standing on the quay who would have given all they had to come with us. It was thought a finer thing then to have a cabin-boy's berth on the Dawn Treader than to wear a knight's belt. I don't know if you get the hang of what I'm saying. But what I mean is that I think chaps who set out like us will look as silly as - as those Dufflepuds - if we come home and say we got to the beginning of the world's end and hadn't the heart to go further."

"This isn't going well," Sophia whispered to her cousin. "What are we to do if half of our crew hangs back?"

"Wait," Caspian whispered back. "I've still a card to play."

"Aren't you going to say anything, Reep?" Lucy whispered to the small mouse.

"No. Why should your Majesty expect it?" Reepicheep answered in a voice that most people heard. "My owns plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan's country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise and Peepiceek will be head of the talking mice in Narnia."

"Hear, hear," said a sailor, "I'll say the same, barring the bit about the coracle, which wouldn't bear me." He added in a lower voice, "I'm not going to be outdone by a mouse."

At this point Caspian jumped to his feet. "Friends," he said, "I think you have not quite understood our purpose. You talk as if we had come to you with our hat in our hand, begging for shipmates. It isn't like that at all. We and our royal brothers and sister and their kinsman and Sir Reepicheep, the good knight, and the Lord Drinian have an errand to the world's edge. It is our pleasure to choose from among such of you as are willing those whom we deem worthy of so high an enterprise. We have not said that any can come for the asking. That is why we shall now command the Lord Drinian and Master Rhince to consider carefully what men among you are the hardest in battle, the most skilled seamen, the purest in blood, the most loyal to our person, and the cleanest of life and manners; and to give their names to us in a schedule." He paused and went on in a quicker voice, "Aslan's mane!" he exclaimed. "Do you think that the privilege of seeing the last things is to be bought for a song? Why, every man that comes with us shall bequeath the title of Dawn Treader to all his descendants, and when we land at Cair Paravel on the homeward voyage he shall have either gold or land enough to make him rich all his life. Now - scatter over the island, all of you. In half an hour's time I shall receive the names that Lord Drinian brings me."

There was rather a sheepish silence and then the crew made their bows and moved away, one in this direction and one in that, but mostly in little knots or bunches, talking.

"And now for the Lord Rhoop," said Caspian.

But turning to the head of the table he saw that Rhoop was already there. He had arrived, silent and unnoticed, while the discussion was going on, and was seated beside the Lord Argoz. Liliandil stood beside him as if she had just helped him into his chair; Ramandu stood behind him and laid both his hands on Rhoop's grey head. Even in daylight a faint silver light came from the hands of the star. There was a smile on Rhoop's haggard face. He held out one of his hands to Lucy and the other to Caspian. For a moment it looked as if he were going to say something. Then his smile brightened as if he were feeling) some delicious sensation, a long sigh of contentment came from his lips, his head fell forward, and he slept.

"Poor Rhoop," Lucy said. "I am glad. He must have had terrible times." '

"Don't let's even think of it," Eustace told her.

Meanwhile Caspian's speech, helped perhaps by some magic of the island, was having just the effect he intended. A good many who had been anxious enough to get out of the voyage felt quite differently about being left out of it. And of course whenever any one sailor announced that he had made up his mind to ask for permission to sail, the ones who hadn't said this felt that they were getting fewer and more uncomfortable. So that before the half-hour was nearly over several people were positively "sucking up" to Drinian and Rhince (at least that was what they called it at my school) to get a good report. And soon there were only three left who didn't want to go, and those three were trying very hard to persuade others to stay with them. And very shortly after that they also agreed to go.

At the end of the half-hour they all came trooping back to Aslan's Table and stood at one end while Drinian and Rhince went and sat down with Caspian and made their report; and Caspian accepted all the men for the voyage. That night they all ate and drank together at the great table between the pillars where the feast was magically renewed: and next morning the Dawn Treader set sail once more just when the great birds had come and gone again.

"Lady," Caspian said, brushing his lips across Liliandil's hand, "I hope to speak with you again when I have broken the enchantments." And Liliandil looked at him and smiled.


End file.
